#deangenchallenge

Work content

Dean Winchester must be the focus of the work, no putting him in the supporting role

No ships as this is a gen challenge

Platonic and familial relationships are fine

Passing hook-ups, similar to those Dean would engage in during case on the show, are also okay — they can’t however be the main focus of the works

All works must match the given theme but you’re free to interpret it however you want it, both literally or metaphorically

Mature/explicit content and dark themes are allowed, but must be properly warned for; visual explicit works must be hosted elsewhere and linked to on tumblr, not to violate tumblr’s content guidelines

No sexual content involving minors

No RPF or reader-insert works — the focus of this challenge is Dean

Works using quotes about Dean coming from Jensen, other actors, or the show’s creators are fine

You can submit more than one work for each theme

Work types

Various types of works are welcome, such as fanfic, fanart, graphics, gifsets, fanvids, fanmixes, fic rec lists

Minimum requirements (there is no maximum)

Fanfic: at least 500 words (remember to use read more when posting the whole fic to tumblr)

Fanart/graphics: at least 1 art piece, width 540px

Gifsets: at least 3 gifs

Fanmix: at least 8 songs + description of how they relate to Dean and the theme

Fanvid: min 30 sec

Podfic: read, not tts, fic of min 500 words

Fic rec list: at least 4 fics written by others + commentary on how they fit the theme

all podfic’d and rec’d fics must also fit the content rules of the challenge

He fumbles around and finds a lighter - holds it, with his hands - in his pocket - the pocket of his clothes, the ones he’s wearing - and flicks it on. The light makes it even realer, being able to see his very own hands. They look like his. 

He’s in a box. He feels around- feels it, feels the wood of it- realizes this must be his coffin. “Help!”, he calls out a few times and nearly doesn’t recognize his own voice, he sounds so hoarse. Could be from fear or because his oxygen is already running low or because he’s spent the last forty years screaming and that somehow carried over to his real actual vocal cords. 

It’s not that he’s beginning to panic: it’s that he’s been panicking since he opened his real eyes. He knows this is real, knows somehow that this isn’t a trick Hell is pulling on him - and why would it, why would it, it had him - but he’s still stuck here, a living corpse in a box in the earth everyone should have forgotten and stopped caring about decades ago. He slaps his palm against the coffin ceiling; then balls a fist and hits it. Dirt from his own grave rains down on his face. 

He starts pounding the material relentlessly, putting as much force behind his fist as he is capable of in the small space. He breaks through it, slips his lighter back into his pocket and now re-engulfed in darkness widens the hole in the wood. 

The earth above him comes spilling down on him, filling his coffin, and he beats it before it can bury him once more and climbs forward, up out of the box. He forces the earth out of the way, fear and adrenaline fueling him, and it’s like swimming through rock, like he’s hanging suspended in deep space. He keeps his mouth closed as to not swallow the dirt, can’t breathe and reminds himself that he hadn’t taken a breath in forty years, he can do it for a little while longer, as long as it takes him to climb six feet. It’s darker than demon black behind his closed eyelids, a dark that is more than the absence of light, and the ground is pressing at every part of him, pulling at him, but he pushes back against it, fights to make progress, refuses to let himself be obstructed now, this close back to life. To life. 

His hand punches through the earth and he can feel the air on his skin, the sun - it’s daytime- and then he thrusts up his other hand. He grabs onto the ground, claws at it with his nails, and drags himself up, up, up. The gap becomes big enough for light to go through and then his head- and then he’s topside, inhaling desperately, gratefully. He braces his arms and hauls the rest of him out, crawls out of his grave like he's dug himself all the way out of hell. Then he turns so he’s laying in the grass and he breathes it in, truly, deeply breathes in the first real breaths of air he’s had in over a lifetime. 

He can’t dwell on it- everything that happened in the Pit- more than that just yet. He’s holding it off for now, he’ll have to let it hit him later on. 

He lies in the grass that had grown over his grave and breathes, for a few moments: lets himself take these few seconds of rest. The sun is burning high and hot in the sky, and it’s the single most welcome feeling he can imagine in the world. After so long where there was nothing to keep him warm but for the fires of Hell and the knife and the whispered, hissed praises- 

The sensation of the sun shining down on him could make him start to cry. It is both alien and familiar, a reliving of a memory of long ago. The sun beats, inexorable, his heart alongside it. His eyes are tightly shut against its light, but it reassures him its there through the afterimage of yellow on the back of his eyelids. Reassures him if he opens them, he’ll open them to light. He focuses his senses on the genuine warmth of the sunshine on his skin, on his dirt-covered, sweaty face, seeping through the clothes he’s wearing, streaking through his hair, its enveloping embrace like nature herself is welcoming him back to life.