SPN: see light where others cannot (Sam/Dean, NC-17) (Part 1)

[nilyn]

This is the first time:

The diner is an old brick affair, weathered at the edges but lit up bright and cheery by the mid-morning sun streaming in through the dusty windows. Fans whirl overhead but heat creeps in every time the door opens, the jingling bell overhead an advance warning for the breeze to follow. Sam sighs and shifts in his seat, the vinyl creaking under him. Dean's existence is devoted entirely to consuming coffee and huevos rancheros for the moment, fork clinking on the plate and adding to the low thrum of noise in the room, and so it's only Sam who sees it when it happens.

There's someone in his peripheral vision. He turns his head fast, made unsure by the way the man seems to waver. He rubs his eyes, takes a sip of coffee, but the man remains stubbornly present, walking back to one of the tables as though there's nothing wrong. As though there isn't something that makes Sam's hair stand on end, just looking at him. It's a deeply-held instinct, one Sam can't shake. The man looks normal enough; he's older, maybe seventy, unremarkable with his thick glasses and polo shirt and confused, knitted eyebrows. He looks around as if unsure of where he is, and Sam is about to speak, about to as him if he's lost, when he notices two things.

One: the back of the man's head is covered in blood. Two: while Sam was watching, a waitress walked straight through him.

There's no drop in temperature, no ozone smell, nothing but instinct and experience that makes Sam see the man for what he is. He tenses, hand going to the gun tucked in his jeans automatically, but the man's head jerks up with an abrupt movement and he moves toward something-or someone-Sam can't see, hand outstretched. He's half out of sight, just a glimmer in the corner of Sam's eye when light envelops him and he vanishes into nothingness.

No one else is looking towards where the man was. No one else seems to have noticed that anything happened. Even Dean is still eating his eggs, oblivious, although he hasn't looked up from his plate in quite a while.

The door to the men's room opens then, and Sam's thoughts flee his head as he hears a high-pitched scream. Like a girl, Dean's going to say like a girl, Sam thinks, looking over. A figure in the doorway, stock-still, and on the ground in front of him, collapsed on the grimy tile, an old man. Thick glasses, polo shirt, blood pooling out from his head. Sam exchanges a look with Dean. Accident, probably. Accident, nothing for them to do, nothing except leave before the police arrive.

Sam doesn't tell Dean about seeing the man before his body was found.



A week later, and Sam is still mulling it over in his head. The man wasn't a vengeful spirit, that much is clear, at least based on the fact that he'd probably died no more than half an hour before Sam saw him, if that. He didn't attempt to hurt anyone, didn't move anything, didn't give any of the usual signs of a manifestation. No one else even noticed that he existed. As far as Sam can tell, he wasn't a vengeful spirit, a death omen, or an echo. He was a garden-variety recently-dead person and nothing more.

And yet, Sam saw him. He has an explanation for that, but it makes even less sense than the rest of what happened in that diner.

Apparently, he's dead.

Again. Only this time, he somehow missed the memo.

Dean must be too, because if he died and Dean didn't, Dean wouldn't be functional. Dean wouldn't be as he is at present, drumming on the steering wheel and singing along to a Ramones tape, somewhere in the gray area between in-tune and awful and sliding from one to the other with a cheerful disregard for Sam's ears. It's forced perkiness, and the upbeat music has been a standard for the past five months, as though Sam's sanity gives a damn about the soundtrack to his life. Still, it's normal.

Despite being theoretically dead, Dean seems to be doing an admirable job of interacting with people and driving a car without going through it, so Sam's theory has some holes. He spends a few days testing it out, in the name of science. It doesn't help.

Upending the salt shaker onto his palm didn't do anything. The five minutes he spent idly twirling an iron rod around just made Dean look vaguely concerned, as though Sam was about to go postal on him with it. His hand doesn't go through walls. He doesn't seem to be able to walk through anything, which is actually a shame, because a day into the experiments he walked headfirst into a door.

Conclusion: he's not dead. He's just apparently seeing dead people, and it's a shame Dean doesn't seem to be too, because there are a wealth of Sixth Sense references to be made.

“Sam?” Dean asks, and Sam startles back into awareness. Dean's fiddling with the volume with one hand and stealing glances at Sam out of the corner of his eye, like if he doesn't actually turn his head Sam won't notice he's doing it. He's been doing that since the wall fell. Sam knows what it looks like; when he gets lost in thought, even if it's unrelated, it looks like those early days, the dangerous days, where he could forget where he was or who he was as easily as breathing. He shakes his head to clear it and looks up.

“Fine, Dean,” Sam says, smiling fondly at his brother just to watch the worry-lines soften. “Just thinking.”

“Gonna share with the class?”

Sam thinks about it. “Nah,” he says. “Not yet.”

Dean shrugs and cranks the music, and Sam lets his mind blur away, miles of flat scrub and blown-open blue sky dulling his senses as he rests his head against the window. He smiles to himself, only half-listening to Dean's singing starting up again. Maybe he shouldn't question it. He's alive and so is Dean. He hasn't needed anything more than that in a long time.



Three days later, Dean comes back to the motel room spooked. He doesn't say a word for a moment, but he shoves his hands in his pockets so Sam doesn't see them shaking. His eyes are wide and his gaze darts around the room, trying to find something to settle on. Dull beige walls, unremarkable frayed bedspreads, one with a hole burnt into it, the same lamps and TV that've been in their rooms for the past thousand miles. There's nothing in the room to look at except Sam. For some reason, Dean seems to think Sam won't notice he's freaking out just so long as he doesn't actually make eye contact.

“Dean,” Sam says, trying to be as patient as possible, “you're freaking out. Look at me, man.”

“I'm fine,” Dean says, settling down onto the opposite bed and clasping his hands together. It gives a groan of protest and Sam could swear a puff of dust rises up into the already-stale air at the movement. Dean makes a face at that, and there, there's Sam's opportunity.

“We've got to start staying in better places,” he says, scooting over so he can bump his knee against Dean's companionably. “Did you find anything?”

Dean's silent for a long moment. “Saw something,” he admits, finally looking over at Sam. His eyes are bright and wide, almost painfully green in the lamplight, and, not for the first time, something low flutters in Sam's belly just looking at him.

“A ghost?” Sam asks.

Dean snorts. “Yeah, I'm not used to seeing ghosts. They're all new and freaky. I haven't been seeing 'em since I was like ten or anything.”

“Don't be a dick. That's not what I-nevermind.”

“C'mon, Sammy. Spill.”

“Was about a week and a half ago,” Sam says, laying back so he can stretch out on the bed while he talks. It's easier, not having to look at Dean, but his arms go off the sides of the bed and his feet stick out at the bottom. He sighs. “That diner, back in Tulsa? With the dead guy in the bathroom?” He shifts, trying to find a comfortable spot on a mattress that doesn't have any.

“Yeah?”

“I saw him,” Sam says finally. He closes his eyes, the weight of the admission heavy on him. “Walking around. After-you know. After he was dead.”

“Oh,” Dean says quietly, and the two of them lapse into silence. In the distance, cars rush by on the road, kicking up water from an earlier rainstorm. The lights of the motel buzz and crackle, and the bathroom light flickers off-on, off-on twice before Dean speaks again. “I saw something like that too,” he says. He reaches out and prods Sam in the side, and Sam yelps.

“Dude, what the hell.”

“Just making sure we're not ghosts,” Dean says, smirking, eyes alight with challenge, but his smile fades when Sam sits up and gives him a serious look.

“I already checked,” he says, a hand over his side where Dean just touched him. “You thought I was being clumsy.”

“Oh, so you walked into the door on purpose.”

“... Yeah.” Sam hadn't, but Dean doesn't need to know that.

“Uh huh.”

Sam flips him off and Dean grins.

By unspoken agreement, they leave it alone for a while.



Lake Michigan stretches out before them, vast and endless slate-blue water, sky as colorless and unremarkable as the beach under their feet, as though all the color for miles around has been sucked away. The beach is empty and a cool, bitter wind whips up, rippling the water. Sam walks forward, sand between his toes, cold and clumping with moisture. Dean jogs forward to catch up to him, spraying sand and pebbles. It's too cold to go to the beach.

There's an outcropping of rock at the water's edge, big enough for the both of them, and Sam gets there first. He crawls up and dangles his feet over the edge, just close enough to be able to feel the water spraying him when the breeze hits it just right. He shivers, looking over to Dean as Dean settles down next to him.

“Whose bright idea was it to go to the beach in October, anyway?” Dean asks, looking out at the water. It's like it could stretch forever, like the two of them could walk out onto it and keep going until the end of time. Far away from the road and alone on the beach, their voices are the only sounds that rise above the whistling wind and the birds that wheel overhead.

The world is too big, here. Sam's glad for the comfort of Dean next to him, the heat of Dean's body as it presses against his. All this empty, open space would terrify him if he was alone.

But then, that's true of most of the world, these days. Sam hasn't seen a demon in four months. Half their cases, at least, are garden-variety salt-and-burns and nothing else; most of the time, that's all there is to find. The night is safer than it used to be. The dark is emptier. The shadows have faded away, dissolving into light. Maybe that's what Sam gets in exchange for having a broken mind; if there's a bigger plan behind the world now he can't see it. They haven't seen Castiel since the night Purgatory was opened. They still don't know how they got away. Someone, or something, sent them back to where the Impala was, and they stumbled away as best as they could from there.

In the early days, Sam didn't notice the changes. He was busy trying to keep himself together, and taking new cases wasn't on his or Dean's mind. Sometimes he would collapse for hours, or days, at a time, or he would find himself in an alleyway in a new city, covered in grime, being shaken awake by Dean, with no memory whatsoever of getting himself there. Even now, he has days where he can't get out of bed, and Dean has forbidden him from driving at any point in the near future. He'll probably never drive the Impala again. It's not safe; he's not safe.

The safer, emptier world-it should be a blessing, a respite from everything the world has thrown at them lately. Instead, it's strangely terrifying. The world Sam knew from before is gone, and it's only Dean at his side that keeps him sane and level in the face of that.

And then, there's this new thing. Sam still doesn't know what to make of it; he and Dean haven't talked about what they've both seen, although it's happened another time since. In a movie theater in central Iowa, Sam and Dean both saw a man get up from his seat-and leave his body behind him. Dean managed to spill his popcorn and Sam got an elbow to the ribs and the two of them were too busy trying to make sure the other saw it that they missed the man's spirit disappearing, leaving only the shell behind.

It's not like Sam's abilities, which are dormant for now. It's something more natural than that, more basic. It goes down to bone and blood, and he shares it with Dean. Dean, the only constant in his life, his one anchor-point to the world around him. It's because of that, and because of that only, that he can handle it.

Dean tugs at a piece of rock until it slips free in his hand and then tosses it out into the water with a flick of his wrist. He was trying to skip it, Sam can tell, but it slips into the water with a light plop instead, and Dean scowls, feeling Sam's body shake with barely-contained laughter. The laughter comes easier than it has in a long time.

“You know,” Sam says into the stillness, later, “we're not supposed to be seeing them.”

“Course I know that, Sammy,” Dean says. He picks at a jagged edge of stone with a fingernail, flicks back-forth. It grates against Sam's nerves but he knows it's just reflex. Just a sign that Dean is uncomfortable. “Could always be a curse.” There's a hopeful note to his voice, and Sam cuts him off before he can say, 'we could call Bobby.' It's tempting; having an encyclopedia on speed dial means never having to bother sitting around and wondering, but Sam knows it's not a curse. Dean does too, probably. Curses spider out from the center, leaving a low-grade hum of wrong all over his body. He knows the feeling well enough by now. This isn't like that.

“What would we even say?” Sam asks, struck by the way Dean stands out against the bleakness of their surroundings, a bright spot against all the gray. He's gotten into the habit of answering questions Dean forgot to ask. It saves time for everyone, even if it annoys the hell out of Dean. “Hey, Bobby, promise you won't laugh, is there a curse that makes you see dead people.”

“Life.”

“What?”

“The curse that makes you see dead people,” Dean explains, kicking his legs back and forth. Sam is suddenly, vividly reminded of the two of them sitting by a riverbank at twelve and eight, trying to tempt the fish into nibbling on their toes because Dean thought he could reach in and grab one if it got interested enough in eating Sam's feet.

“Well, that's cheerful,” Sam says. “You were supposed to be answering as Bobby.”

“Less depressing, more whiskey-fueled?” Dean asks, affecting the best thoughtful expression he can manage. “More like, 'I'll look into it, call me if you two chuckleheads manage to pick up anything worse in the meantime.'”

Sam shrugs. “Closer. Your accent's off though.”

“You got a better one?”

“No,” Sam admits. “And that's why I don't do impressions.”

They call Bobby the next day anyway, just to check in. Dean doesn't mention the curse and Sam doesn't call him on it; it's enough to get across that neither of them is a drooling wreck and they're not horribly maimed in some way. The fact that that's the standard for 'doing fine' is a little sad, but that's life for you, Sam figures. At least, that's this life.



There's a ghost tucked away in the far corner of an old house in Missouri, a place long-abandoned and peeling, a warped black shape towering up towards the sky with trees curling in on all sides. No deaths, but enough rumors to spark curiosity. Enough to lure in thrill-seeking teenagers who come out the other side battered and bruised, and that's enough of a reason for Sam and Dean to make their way inside. The place has been empty for years, probably since the thirties if Sam were to take a guess. Boarded-up windows with spray-painted graffiti, old couches with mice burrowed into the stuffing, cracked and peeling paint and floorboards that bend and creak with every step. Exactly the type of place that looks like it should be haunted, which generally means it isn't. Sam's about to give up on the place when Dean taps him on the shoulder and gestures with a jerk of his head to the wavering form of a little boy down the hall from them.

He and Dean approach as carefully as they can, but the boy doesn't attack. Sam doesn't lower his gun, but he says, “Hey,” soft and gentle. It's worth a try. Sometimes, with the younger ones, just talking works better than shooting. Simpler emotions are stronger, linger more easily; no one is quite so stubborn as a small child can be.

“Hi,” the boy says, staring down at his feet instead of looking at Sam. “Are you here to break stuff too?”

Sam and Dean exchange a glance. “No,” Sam says, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans.

As it turns out, the boy wants someone to talk to, more than anything. Sam sits him down and tries to be as gentle as possible, hunching away his height and using what Dean calls his 'spooked horse voice.' Dean just watches, leaning against the wall, and he rubs his ring finger absently, as though he doesn't even realize he's doing it. Sam knows what he's doing; he made Dean tell him about the day he wore Death's ring not long after Dean did the deed. He's been better about spirits, since. Whatever he saw that day-he didn't give many details-changed him in some inarguable way. And maybe he's not contributing now, but he's there, and he's willing to step in when Sam's had enough. Sam doesn't need to ask him to know that.

And then, it's done. The boy fades into light beside Sam and Sam just watches him go, afraid to break the moment. It's deathly still in the house, after, no sounds except the slow whistle of the trees back and forth in the wind outside and their breathing.

“Guess I'll put the kerosene back in the trunk,” Dean says, never afraid to ruin the silence for Sam. He grins and claps Sam on the shoulder affectionately, and Sam's body goes warm all over from the contact. He bats Dean's hand away, but he's smiling, all the same.



There's something between them, these days, deep and basic like blood. Sam can see it, and if Dean can't, he's blind. They're closer than they used to be, closer than when Sam threw himself into Hell for Dean-or the world, but what's the difference, in the end?--or in the early days of having his soul back, where everything was new and raw and Dean couldn't stop watching him. Months of Dean holding him together when nothing else would brought Dean into sharper focus for Sam. They're already soulmates, by Heaven's definition, and now they share this new ability, too.

Sam sees people die often enough; it's an occupational hazard. These days, he's getting used to seeing their spirits rise after they fall. They don't usually linger, but Sam can see when they do; he knows when they'll turn violent, like a sixth sense. There's anger in their eyes, hot and blazing, as though they're crying out, “What happened to me? I didn't deserve this. This isn't fair.” If they speak, he can't hear them. Not yet, at least. Maybe that will come in time.

And so their lives change, a bit at a time. They can't burn the recently-dead easily, but Sam takes to noting down where the potential vengeful spirits will be. If something crops up in the area, they'll be ready, already knowing what happened before anyone else does. No one has to get hurt, not if they're quick. He spends long hours in the car, adding details to an already-growing book, and Dean fills in the blanks for him when he stalls. They go back and forth like that through the night, building up profiles. John's journal is in the trunk, and as Sam makes notations he's reminded of it. This journal is shared between them as much as that one ever was.



Life narrows down to the road ahead of them, stretching out into the future. Endless highways and the sameness of every motel room in America make Sam feel as though he's living the same day forever. He knows what that's like; this time, though, Dean stays alive. The world is so small now. Civilians blur in and out of their lives and they hardly take notice; Sam used to have more of a passing acquaintance with normal, with people who didn't spend their nights with a shovel in one hand and a match in the other. He used to be able to integrate into a world where having an arsenal in the trunk wasn't normal. The world is emptier of their kind, and so they continue on, just the two of them.

Bobby calls sometimes, and others enter the life and don't leave; the night is safer and so people remain who would have died out, before. Sometimes they cross paths with others. There's still little in common; those new, younger hunters have never seen a fraction of what Sam and Dean have seen between them, and they never will. The connection between them and the rest of the hunting world is frayed at best, and sometimes it's easier to just move on to new cases and leave those strangers behind. Chasing the spirits of the dead, in one way or another, has always been the Winchester lot in life. These days, it's more so than it's ever been.



They make their way across the flat expanse of Utah, miles of gray land and gray sky, cracked dirt spiderwebbing out like trees. Sam watches tiny towns blur into the distance in the side mirrors, wondering what sort of people they contain. They're on the second day of a cross-country drive and exhaustion pounds through his skull, turning Dean's music into a throbbing buzz in his mind. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the cool glass of the window.

Dean takes the hint, and they stop for coffee at the next exit. The place is small and unremarkable, a soft-lit wooden cafe that's not much their style, but it's what they've got and it's better than nothing. Sam settles down at one of the tables, crossing his legs at the ankles and leaning back in his chair to stretch out his aching back, and it's only because he has one hand gripping the table that he doesn't completely upend himself when he sees it.

“Dean,” he hisses, and Dean turns around. “Look.”

He's almost afraid to look in that direction. Dean does without the slightest bit of hesitation, of course, because he doesn't know what's there.

“... What the hell?” Dean asks, trying valiantly to not let his voice get above a whisper. It's not working.

There's a reaper sitting in the corner, drinking a cup of coffee. Gray-white face, black suit, disturbingly cheerful expression all things considered, and unless Sam is hallucinating the reaper is also reading the paper. There's a grim reaper reading a newspaper and drinking coffee and Sam is actually awake and witnessing it.

It chuckles, and Sam revises his list of Creepiest Things Ever, adding it solidly at number two, after clowns.

“Bet he's looking at the obituaries,” Dean says.

“Dude.”

“What, you were thinking it too.”

Rationally, Sam knows he shouldn't be surprised. If he can see spirits, by all rights he should be able to see reapers just as easily, seeing as they're both part of the spirit world. Irrationally, he wants to run away and not stop until he's gotten a couple states between him and it. Dean isn't as fazed, but Dean has actually been Death, so it's probably tame in comparison.

“Can anyone else even see him?” Sam whispers, glancing over at Dean. “I mean, he's got a coffee-unless he can make his own he'd have to actually order it.”

“They can appear however they want,” Dean points out. “Remember Tessa?”

“And 'visible' is one of the options?”

“Do I look like the expert here?”

The reaper is staring at them. In fairness, they've been staring at it (him?) for a solid five minutes, but Sam is still not big on the idea of getting into a staring contest with a reaper. He swallows hard and stares at the tabletop instead.

“Dean, we are leaving. Now.” Sam lets himself glance at the reaper again and it raises an eyebrow at him. It doesn't have the kind of face that works well with actual facial expressions, especially not ones like that.

He doesn't get his coffee. He's pretty sure he does get scoffed at, on his way out.

For the sake of his sanity, he's pretending to not notice.



One month blurs into the next, the days slipping away like water. They spend their nights on the road, in motel rooms, sitting side-by-side against the solid, reassuring weight of the Impala watching the stars. Sam tries to name the constellations in order in his head and gets lost, and Dean watches the trails of planes through the night sky suspiciously, just in case one of them happens to start falling. He has a strange and irrational paranoia about planes landing on him, even after Sam explains the impossible odds of it happening. They watch awful game shows and reruns and Dean spends three days saying “holy rusted metal, Batman!” at every opportunity because he knows it drives Sam nuts. The car rumbles on strong and sure, and they knock cases down, one after another.

Life is still and peaceful, more so than it's been in a long time, and Sam holds onto it with everything he has. He hasn't had to patch Dean up in a long time, praying he won't bleed out, hands shaking as he tries to thread a needle with his hands covered in blood. Dean hasn't had to hold vigil over Sam's unconscious body more than twice in the past few months; Sam still breaks, sometimes, but not often. He's starting to see what brings on the flashbacks, and so it's easier to avoid them. They're getting older and more experienced, but it's more than that. Sam's almost got himself convinced that he's not aging. Dean found his first gray hair four months back, and hasn't seen one since. Of course, he's still in his thirties, so it's early for him, but the Apocalypse certainly didn't make either of them look younger. Maybe they just need to wait, and they'll change with the world, instead of it changing around them. Maybe. Sam's not so sure, anymore.

The two of them snake from one end of the country to the other, speeding down winding mountain roads and dipping into valleys. The plains stretch out before them, vast and endless, and Dean drives like all Hell is chasing them, engine growling like it's a creature of flesh and blood. Only a few years before, all Hell was chasing them. Now, nothing is after them. Heaven is quiet; for better or worse, the war is over. Hell is keeping to itself just as much.

There's no greater picture, no higher goal. It's just him and Dean and the people they can save. He's missed it more than he ever expected to.

Dean cranks up the music with a wild grin and they speed off into the night.



They're stopped at a gas station in Colorado, high up in the mountains where the sun scorches the ground and the breeze is no more gentle. Sam is slumped in the passenger seat, arm propped on the open window, and he can feel his skin burning. It's hot, unseasonably so, and he's sweating like a pig, sticking to the seats. He shifts uncomfortably and the seat beneath him squeaks in protest. Dean is taking longer than he expected. He's probably buying half the store, if Sam was to guess; they're two days into a new credit card and Dean got a good take last night. Sam can't begrudge him a little indulgence at this point. As long as he comes out with something cold for Sam to drink, Sam won't care if he's in there buying Ho-Hos or some equal monstrosity.

Dean's suddenly visible out of the corner of his eye and he blinks, looking up. Only two bags on Dean's arm, and Dean has an expression on his face that Sam actually can't place.

“Dean?” he asks, frowning, and Dean hands him the bags without another word before sliding into the driver's side.

“Guess who I saw?” Dean asks, starting the car. He doesn't look over at Sam.

“Hmm?”

“Tessa.”

“... in the gas station.”

“You going deaf on me, Sam? Yeah, in the gas station. Candy aisle. Maybe she was stopping for a snack.”

“Or else she was checking up on you. I mean, come on, Dean, it's pretty weird that you just happened to run into her.”

“Why would she be checking up on me?”

“Maybe something to do with the sneak-peek into the spirit world we've been getting this year?”

“... Dude,” Dean says, opening a Coke and taking a swig, “One, we've already seen it. Two, you've died four times and I've bit it so many times I've lost track. It's not really a sneak-peek anymore.”

Sam has to concede the point.

Part Two