Chapter Text
They insist they're not children anymore, but that doesn't matter on these days. They cling to the bright colored fabric of the white, pink, purple, and blue parachute and march in a circle, and the teacher shouts ready? and they whip it up like they're one body and duck under, quick, sitting on the seam to make a circus tent. The parachute towers over them and the children laugh.
A young boy stands, walking around the edge, trailing his fingers on the fabric, amazed.
He stumbles around the bubblegum-tinted chaos like an amnesia victim, watching the parachute deflate.
Children's eyes are meant to be innocent. The parachute is an example of beauty, youth, and naive fun.
This boy's eyes do not look that way.
His name is Dean, and something else is dawning in his eyes. Something akin to fear. Like he's just realized that he's alive, and that's a kind of horrifying realization.
As the parachute comes down, it muffles the sound of the other children's laughter.
There is an old couch that Dean sits on, trying to take up space in his still-little body just like his father. He flips through the television, leaning back with a mimicry of macho bravado, drooping his eyelids in a way he doesn't understand yet is not how people look when watching TV, but how they look when drinking. He is older now.
The TV is big and bulky and not as sleek as the ones he sees in the stores. He flicks between channels, bored. There's never anything on- the news, sports, more news, commercials, black and white films that move so slow he can't keep interest.
Then a bright bubble gum color takes up the dark living room, a color he knows consciously he should express disgust at.
“Next week,” a serious announcer's voice says, “on the Pink Opaque...”
It sounds like a children's show, if a children's show was horrifying. Dean can't help but watch, stiffening his body like he does when he needs to press down anxiety. Two people on the screen argue in a panic.
“Drain lords! Hundreds of them, Jo... coming out of the drains!”
“It's Mr. Melancholy! It's just a trick, Cas.”
Dean stares at the screen, mystified. He's finally found something worthy of his attention.
“How am I ever going to shower again?”
“They can't hurt you if you don't think about them. They can't hurt you if you don't think about them!”
The announcer comes back. “Saturday at 10:30 PM, only on-“
Heavy footsteps start in the hall and Dean quickly clicks it off, scrambling up to narrowly avoid his dad and shouts “going to bed now!”
He ducks under the covers the moment he enters his room, guilt washing over him in an unfamiliar yet well known. If asked, though, he couldn’t explain why.
On the sidewalk in the summertime, a few mothers join their toddlers with the chalk, etching in purple beautiful slogans with gentle hands. It stains Dean's mind- there is still time. He can't explain how, but it glows.