Chapter Text
Nothing about the first time they met was particularly remarkable to Dean. After all, falling asleep and into a world of crazy was an every-night affair for his young self, and it had been like that for as long as he could remember. Mom always said he had an overactive imagination, whatever that word meant, and that it would go away when he grew up and became big and strong, like daddy. The nights he had bad dreams, he wished he’d grow up right that second, all so the nightmares would stay away, but nights like that particular one were fine. Fun , one might even say, if Dean knew how to play his cards.
There was a little boy in a room, apart from himself, that is. He had raven hair and eyes as blue as a summer sky. Dean had yet to see the ocean, Sammy was too little for them to venture out like that, but that particular shade of blue was what he imagined the oceans looked like.
“Hi,” he greeted him, coming further into the room.
It was a child’s bedroom, now that he looked at it. The walls were painted a warm peach color that the sunlight brought out beautifully, and the wind was softly blowing up the curtains through the open windows in the back wall. The little boy was in the middle of the room, sitting on a wooden chair at an art’s table, idly drawing on some paper with colored crayons.
“Can I draw with you?” Dean asked, ignoring the lack of response to his greeting.
The little boy finally looked up, and his very blue eyes fell on Dean. He felt like they were staring right through him and at his soul. Eventually, he seemed to find Dean worthy of sharing his time with, and gave him a minute nod.
“Awesome!” Little Dean practically ran to the table and pulled a chair out for himself, taking a seat and grabbing a sheet of paper. “What are you drawing?” He asked, being faced with an endless quantity of crayons and no idea what to draw with them.
“Bees.” The boy replied, short and to the point. However, when Dean looked at the drawing he was working on, he saw nothing but destruction and giants and catastrophe. Cool.
“Oh, okay!” He didn’t let the clear inconsistency between what the boy said and the drawing in front of him show on his face, though he was very confused.
Dean had learned it the hard way that the people he dreamed of didn’t enjoy knowing that he was aware of the fact that he was dreaming. So, sometimes, when he saw things that didn’t make sense, instead of asking about them and indulging his innate 5-year-old curiosity, he let them be. Sometimes, stuff made so little sense it could even be funny. Right now, though, it was awesome, because the drawing on that boy’s sheet was sick , even if it wasn’t of bees.
Dean picked up a yellow crayon and began the outline of a giraffe. Lately, he’d been really into safari animals, so he figured he could try drawing those. The crayon slid smoothly on the paper, and he drew the outline of a giraffe that he wouldn’t be able to recreate when awake, as he knew he wasn’t that good of an artist. At that, he let out a little gasp of wonder.
“What?” The little boy across from him asked.
“I’d never drawn a giraffe so pretty before.” Dean replied, turning his drawing around to show it off.
“It really is pretty.” Dean smiled at the boy, and he got a very small, closed-lip smile from him.
“What’s your name? I’m Dean .” However, when Dean went to share his name with blue-eyes, no words came out of his mouth. “What? Why can’t I say my name? I’m Dean .” He tried again, but to no avail. The boy tilted his head to the right, as if analyzing everything going through Dean’s face.
“It’s okay if I don’t know your name. My name is…” He frowned when his name, too, didn’t come out his mouth, though he’d clearly tried to. “Huh. Weird.” And yet, that was all his reaction. Dean noted he was really calm and collected.
“I want you to know my name, though.” Dean complained, making a pout of his lips that he’d deny if confronted about it.
“We don’t need names to draw together.” He pointed out, smiling close-lipped again.
“Guess you’re right.” Dean replied, defeated, picking out the brown crayon so he could give his giraffe some spots on its body. Soon enough, though, an idea popped up in his head that made him forget about not knowing blue-eyes’ name. “Hey, watch this!”
Being aware he was dreaming often came with the ability to shape the dream into whatever he wanted. It was hard, and he tried to not do it too much, as it could let them know about the fact that he was aware. But it was fun and exciting to let go sometimes, even if it was just something small.
He focused on the giraffe on his sheet and, within a few seconds, it lifted from the paper, rendering a small animal not too different from the one he’d drawn standing on the table. It then took a couple of clumsy steps, all under the amazed eyes of the little boy in front of Dean, and the little green-eyed boy had never felt his heart so warm and content in his short life at seeing such wonder.
“How did you do that?” Blue-eyes asked.
“I… I don’t really know. I guess I just can.” Feigning ignorance was almost always the safer answer.
“So cool.” The boy muttered, following the newly alive giraffe as it walked on the tabletop. “Could we do some more? We could make an entire safari!” He said, and the contrast between the calm, almost compulsory quietness Dean had walked into, and this excited little boy, asking for little animals on his drawing table was stark.
“Sure!” Dean conceded.
The little boy pushed the drawing he was previously making aside, and grabbed some blank sheets for both him and Dean, not noticing his masterpiece of chaos had fallen to the floor face down. He wordlessly urged them to keep on drawing animals so that Dean could bring them to life, almost vibrating in his seat from excitement but not quite. He drew a lion, Dean an elephant, and those were the next two animals to rise from the paper and walk the table alongside the no-longer-wobbly giraffe. Blue-eyes glistened in delight as they tracked behind the animals, watching them interact.
“Could we add some bees? Like the ones I was drawing.” Dean minutely tilted his head in confusion. The little boy really seemed unaware of the landscape he’d been drawing.
“Wouldn’t the bees sting the animals?” Dean argued, ignoring his nagging curiosity.
“Bees only sting when they feel attacked, or when their hive is in danger.” Blue-eyes argued, in favor of the bees. “If the animals don’t attack the bees, then they’ll be okay.”
“Okay, then!”
They moved on to drawing bees, for real this time, a lot of them. Or well, at least ten. Ten was a lot for two five-year-old boys. Dean then worked his magic, lifting the bees up from the paper and into the world, keeping them flying on top of the table.
“This is so, so cool.”
Watching the animals walk on drawn paper was nice. They paced, and they played, and the bees flew around minding their own business. The lion would stand on its two hind legs and push the giraffe over, and the elephant would grab the lion with its trunk and pull it onto its back, all so the lion would run down its back and jump out at the end. It was silly, and ruled by the knowledge of young boys, not reality itself, and it was beautiful.
Until loud noises contaminated the calm atmosphere Dean and blue-eyes had created for themselves.
It was like thumping. Like when Dean’s dad got home after a long day at work and really wanted to get out of his work clothes and on the couch to watch TV, but for some reason, those thumps sounded way better than the ones in the dream. They were angry, and getting louder, and suddenly, Dean was afraid.
The little boy made eye contact with Dean, and Dean had never seen such horror in his life. The table and the chairs inside the room disappeared, and while blue-eyes was now standing in front of him, Dean had fallen to the floor and landed on his butt. The beautiful sunlight that brought out the peach-colored walls had gone away behind a dark cloud all of the sudden, and the curtains had gone still, as if all wind had ceased to exist.
“What’s going on? I… I don’t understand?” Dean tried to ask from his place on the floor, but no answer would come.
Blue-eyes only looked at him with the saddest, most terrified blue eyes and uttered two small words before everything went black.
“Thank you.”