Fic: Light the Length of August (Supernatural) 4/?

[broken_cinders]

Title: Light the Length of August - Chapter 4: Time to Adapt
Fandom: Supernatural
Character(s): Sam, Cas, Dean
Pairing(s): Gen
Word Count: 3597
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it’s not mine. If you don’t recognize it, it still might not be mine. Any recognizable places or people have been fictionalized. I am not blind. I do not have any immediate acquaintances that are blind. Any mistakes on that front are entirely my own. If you spot an error, let me know. Research can only take me so far.
Summary: Sam thinks of himself as an intelligent guy. He knows life isn’t usually fair. He knows the job they do is dangerous. He knows for them there are no guarantees or ironclad promises. He also knows that time is running out to find his possibly demonic brother and help Cas. He doesn’t have time for another sucker punch from whatever higher power likes toying with him. He still wakes up in the hospital alone and blind.



He had walked with some of the hospital staff guiding him. It had been awkward and uncomfortable. They had pressed close to him and tended to push him out in front of them. It made him feel vulnerable and out of control. Walking with Cas was different. Cas placed himself physically between Sam and the world. He was quiet, but he led with confidence which in turn made Sam walk with more certainty. It still took several minutes before they were navigating together at anything close to a normal pace.

Sam knew he was inching along. His steps felt timid and short compared to his normal, long stride. He tried to force himself to take reasonable steps, but when each one was carrying him further into the unknown he couldn’t help but drag his feet. The anxiety curled in his stomach. He was leaving the only place that he had built even a passing familiarity with behind to step out into an unknown.

Sam had been so focused on just walking that he nearly stumbled over Cas when they stopped without warning. They had to be in the main lobby. They had disembarked from the elevator then made their way into a room that sounded large and open. When they didn’t continue after a moment Sam’s face scrunched in confusion.

“What is it?”

Cas hesitated before saying, “I’m parked a good distance away. I didn’t expect you to be leaving with me. It might be easier if I retrieve my car then come back for you.”

Sam shifted in place. Going outside sounded horrible. He already didn’t like the wide, open feel of the lobby and he knew it was going to be ten times worse outside. Already his grip was tightening on Cas’s arm. At the same time, the last thing he wanted was to be left standing there like a lost dog waiting for someone to come pick him up.

He bit his lip and said, “I can walk it. It’s fine.”

Cas led them out the double doors and into the late afternoon sunshine. As the fresh air hit him in the face it was Sam’s turn to freeze in place. The sunlight engulfed him. His world shifted to white so bright he had to clamp his eyes shut against it and throw his arm up to try and control the assault. After the relatively dim interior of the hospital it felt like sharp knives jabbing through his face.

The minute his hand left Cas’s arm he was lost. He had no reference point and he felt like he was drifting at sea. His panic, already on a tenuous leash after the unexpected pain, nearly overwhelmed him. His breath came sharp and quick.

Cas’s warm hand found his shoulder. Sam resisted the urge to grab it and cling to it with his free hand.

“Sam,” Cas said. He had spoken softly, but it didn’t dull the urgent worry in his voice. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Sam sucked in a breath, trying to ease his ragged panting. “Fine,” he croaked. “I’m okay. It’s just bright. I wasn’t expecting it.”

“I don’t understand. Do you need a doctor?”

“No,” Sam said shaking his head and letting his arm drop from over his face. With is eyes closed, he could just bear the intensity of the sunlight. “I think it’s okay. I still have some light perception. Inside it made everything look a dark grey. Out here it’s just a field of white. It’s so bright it hurts.”

Sam could feel tears gathering in the corners of his eyes from where they were watering at the unexpected attack. Sam rubbed a rough sleeve against the tears. Leaving his eyes twisted shut, he reached back and found Cas’s arm again. “I’m okay. Let’s try this again.”

Cas watched him for another moment but must have decided he was fine. They started moving again. Sam followed Cas’s lead further away from the hospital doors and into the wide unknown of the parking lot. He was leaving a place where his entire life had changed, yet he would never know what it had looked like or put a face to any of the people he’d met.

He could feel some of the tension ease in Cas’s arm as they drew to a stop again. Cas pulled Sam’s hand from its spot on his arm and placed it on a door handle. Sam reached forward and found the smooth metal of the car. It was hot from the direct sunlight.

Sam tugged the door open. With a hand on the top of the opening to keep from smacking his head, he fell into the waiting seat and sank into the shaded interior. He let his head fall back against the headrest.

Cas climbed into the driver’s seat beside him. “I have a pair of sunglasses here somewhere. Would they help?”

Sam shrugged. “Maybe? Do you need them?”

“No,” Cas said.

Sam held still as Cas reached across him and into the glove compartment. There was a lot of shuffling, but eventually the compartment snapped shut and something warm tapped against his clenched hand laying in his lap. Sam forced his fingers to uncurl. The glasses were set into his waiting palm, and he unfolded them exploring their surface. It felt like a pair of wrap arounds, the kind that Dean sometimes splurged on when they had a little extra cash. Sam shoved them onto his face. He took a moment to steel himself in case they didn’t cut the brightness, but to his surprise the world was a shade darker and his eyes didn’t water at the sunlight filling the car.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he shot Cas a little smile. “Thanks.”

Cas didn’t respond. Under him, the car sputtered to life.

The drive to the motel, and Sam’s few remaining possessions, was subdued. He couldn’t figure out anything to say and Cas seemed exhausted in the seat next to him. The five minute drive seemed to stretch on in the heavy silence. Sam couldn’t put his finger on what exactly had made the atmosphere so strained. Maybe Cas was regretting agreeing to help him. Maybe it was the fact Sam was blind now. Maybe he had done something wrong in the short walk to the car.

Whatever the source, Sam was just too tired to figure it out. The staff had warned him to take it easy as he was coming off the last of the medicines in his system. He felt wrung out and the ever present headache was looming just on the horizon. Without the good stuff, even his wrist and ribs were beginning to ache. Sam couldn’t help the sigh of relief that escaped him when Cas announced that they had arrived.

He was glad he’d paid a few days in advance. The trail for Dean had gone cold and the missing girl couldn’t wait the two days for the next nearest hunter to show up. He’d paid for a week, not sure how long it would take to find the monster or how long he might need afterward. It chafed that he had paid for something he didn’t really use, but it meant they could bypass the front office entirely. There was no need to navigate further than the hundred yards between the car and the door to his room.

They made their way inside in the same manner they had stumbled out of the hospital. Sam was secretly glad when the door shut behind them blocking out the overwhelming light and the horrible openness of the parking lot. He let himself relax as he sank down on the bed closest to the bathroom and let his duffle drop to the floor at his feet. He collected himself long enough to smile at Cas and say, “Make yourself at home. I honestly have no idea what state I left the room in, but the other bed’s yours. There should be a beer in the fridge.”

“You don’t remember? Is that because of the concussion?”

Sam shook his head. “No, I was running on about three hours of sleep and trying to find the girl before she became wendigo food. I could probably tell you where I last saw everything, but,” Sam shrugged. “Organization was the last thing on my mind. Seriously, if something’s in the way, just throw it on the table for now.”

He let himself flop back. Maybe a nap wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Cas didn’t say anything in response to his explanation. There was a rustling of paper and he could hear Cas moving around the room, but the angel never spoke. Sam found that however much he hated being left somewhere in the hospital, this was worse. He knew Cas was there, but not what he was doing exactly - not for sure. Occasionally Cas would muffle a cough or his breathing would turn heavy.

Sam sat up after a wracking cough left the angel sputtering. Listening carefully, he stood and shuffled to where Cas had doubled over. He barked his shin on the edge of the opposite bed but managed to find Cas’s arm where it was reaching out to support him against the wall.

“Cas?” Sam asked.

“I’m fine,” was the rasped reply. Sam bit his lip as Cas straightened some.

“Come on,” he said. He pulled Cas’s arm so that it could rest against his shoulder, then turned them back the way he had come. He manhandled them over to the bed, trusting Cas to guide them around any obstacles. He pushed Cas to sit on the bed he had just vacated. “Rest for a minute. I can clean up my own mess.”

“Really, I’m fine,” Cas said, choking on another, weaker cough.

Sam snorted and turned his back. “Obviously. Just humor me.”

Sam shuffled forward until his legs hit the bed a few steps away. He hesitated, unsure how to even go about gathering up the mess he remembered making as he’d strewn papers and maps across the hideous orange duvet. He reached down, tentatively sweeping his hands across the surface, worried about knocking things into the floor. The last thing he wanted to do was grub around on that filthy carpet. It had been a greying brown and matted with things he would rather not think about.

He could feel Cas’s curious eyes on his back, but he ignored it in favor of proving he could do this small task. His fingers brushed against paper and he gathered up the loose sheets pushing them into a neat stack that he set near his right hip. Aside from the fact that they were obviously printouts he had no idea which were which, but for now it didn’t matter. He’d figure a way to sort through it later. Most of it he was just going to burn anyway.

He made himself take his time. What would have taken him five minutes to gather up and put away just days before, he spent nearly twenty minutes on now. He had to sweep the bed from the top at the pillow, down to the foot. Loose papers went in one pile, maps in another, and the odd book in yet a third pile. The few clothes he encountered he folded and laid at the foot of the bed to be jammed into his duffle later. He stacked the debris up, maps on top of papers on top of books, and set everything on the table pushed back until they rested against the wall away from the edge where he might knock them off.

At some point during the process Cas’s breathing had evened out and Sam knew he’d fallen asleep. That in and of itself was worrying. Cas didn’t sleep aside from the brief time he’d spent as human. Even at some of his lowest points Cas had never needed sleep or food or even to breathe. As Sam tucked his clothes into his bag he mentally shook his head at the pair of them. This was a disaster.

Done with his cleaning and not entirely sure what to do, Sam busied himself with finding the bathroom. He hadn’t had a real shower in days. He might have washed all the forest dirt off his skin, but the smell of hospital clung all over him. He kept catching whiffs of it as he moved. He remembered his plan in the hospital and decided it was well past time for phase one. He could get the shower and the beer on his own. Thanks to his father’s insistence on buying the minimum product, a habit Sam had only started to grow out of in his last years of college when he’d finally had enough money to spend on luxuries like body soap and conditioner, he knew very well that his all in one soap would do just fine for, well, all of him.

The tight, coiled anxiety turned loose with the smell of the familiar soap and the crappy water pressure. It was funny how the scent of damp mold and eucalyptus could make him relax, but he finally felt like he was, maybe not home, but certainly back on familiar ground. Bad motel rooms had been the background to most of his life. By the time he climbed out and realized he had forgotten to grab fresh clothes he was feeling lazy and relaxed. He simply wrapped the towel around himself and wandered out to the main room.

His easy languor lasted just as long as it took him to trip over something that tangled around his feet and sent him pitching head first over the back of a metal chair. His momentum took hold of both him and the chair and sent them in a jumbled mess onto the floor where his clean cheek became very well acquainted with a stiff patch of the short, bristly carpet while his aching wrist twisted underneath him as he tried to catch himself.

After an entirely disorienting moment when he tried to figure out up from down and disentangle his legs from the chair, he pushed himself up using his good arm. The back of his head smashed into the underside of the table, rattling the rickety thing and upsetting something on top.

Sam groaned as his hand went to the sore spot on the crown of his head. Hot tears of embarrassment pickled at the corners of his eyes.

“Sam?” Sam flinched at Cas’s voice. It was sleep soft and confused. “Are you okay?”

Sam grunted. “Sorry for waking you.”

“Sam…”

Sam braced himself against his good arm, using his injured hand to find the edge of the table and maneuver out from under it. Cas was there as soon as he’d managed to extricate himself from the mess, a guiding hand helping to balance him under his elbow.

At the touch Sam jumped away, nearly upsetting the table again. Cas’s hands withdrew. “I - sorry. Would you like some help?”

“No,” Sam bit out. He was mortified that anyone had seen that. But he realized as Cas stood there waiting for him to move that he had lost track of where exactly he was. He knew generally where the table was in relation to the bed, but since he’d lost contact with it, he wasn’t sure which way he was facing in the room.

Cas, whether he was reading Sam’s mind or just trying to be helpful, cleared his throat. “The bed is behind you to your right, maybe six steps away.”

Sam nodded, still trying to fight down the urge to either scream or start bawling like a little kid. He turned and took a few cautious steps until he found the edge of the bed. He skirted it and sat down properly on the foot. As he sank into the old mattress, he made another horrible discovery. He could feel the rough fabric of the duvet under his legs and butt cheeks. At some point during the incident his towel had come loose and he’d been standing in the middle of the room, entirely on display in front of Cas no less.

He cringed, feeling the heat crawl up his cheeks all the way to the top of his head. He grabbed the edge of the blanket and threw it across his lap glaring down towards the floor. “God.”

Castiel had been doing something on the other side of the room. Before Sam could even offer a word Cas had crossed and deposited something by his right hand. Sam reached out and found the stiff canvas of his bag.

“Would you like help picking out an outfit?”

If possible, Sam’s mortified blush deepened. He shook his head, not lifting his chin or acknowledging Cas beyond that. He couldn’t even speak at that point.

Cas hummed. “Very well. It was a bit of a drive over, and I’m feeling a little grimy. I am going to take a shower. If you need me, call.”

It was said so matter-of-factly that Sam couldn’t believe the statement was anything else. He nodded, and Cas withdrew. When the bathroom door latched Sam let out a small breath. He relaxed a bit more when the water turned on. He rummaged for the first clothes he could find, not caring if they were clean or dirty. By the time Cas exited the bathroom he had managed to make himself at least not naked and had poked at the buttons on the front of the TV until it was playing some game show in the background. He had no idea where the remote had gone, but all he really wanted was a bit of noise to cut the suffocating silence.

When Cas emerged, Sam was sipping a beer and sweeping most of the categories on Jeopardy for lack of anything better to do.

“Hey,” Sam said as Cas puttered around the room. “I’m sorry. About earlier. I ah…well, thanks. For everything.”

“You don’t need to thank me. I told you that already. And there’s nothing to apologize for either. It will take some time to adapt.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He distinctly didn’t want to think about what that might mean - not tonight. “You hungry? I’m thinking pizza. After that cardboard they were dressing up as food, I think I need something greasy.”

Cas chuckled. “Sure. Would you like your usual?”

Sam smiled and took a sip off his beer. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

For one night he managed to keep the world at bay with pizza, beer, and bad action movies that he spent nearly as much time explaining to Cas as he did laughing at the cheesy lines.

The next day they got the call.

Sam frowned when he heard his phone ringing. That was definitely his ringtone.  He definitely had no idea where his phone had ended up after the hospital.

There was a soft rustling as Cas dug for the phone, then he was speaking softly to whoever had called.

“Hello…Yes, he’s here….Hold on.”

Cas came up to Sam and nudged his arm with the phone. “It’s Dr. Kinder. She wants to speak with you. Would you like me to step away for a moment?”

Sam held his hand out and frowned. “No, it’s fine. Just put it on speaker.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Whatever she has to say is going to affect you too.”

Cas shrugged beside him. “Dr. Kinder? I have you on speaker. Sam is here with me.”

“Mr. Singer,” she said. He couldn’t quite read the tone in her voice, aside from the fact she sounded just as professional as always.

“Hey, doc. What can I do for you?”

“It’s actually the other way around. I heard back from Dr. Singleton over at Brookhaven. You, sir, are one lucky duck. He had an opening and said he could take you as early as Wednesday. Check in is at 8 am. I realize it’s short notice, but this is actually a big deal. Normally it would take several weeks to get you in.”

“Wednesday?” Sam asked, dazed. “That’s two days from now.”

“Yes, I know. Like I said, it’s short notice. I can always call him back and see if he has a later opening.”

“No,” Sam said. “No, that’s fine. I just didn’t realize it would be that soon. Thanks, doc.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Singer. I’ll let Dr. Singleton know to expect you then.”

“Thanks again.”

Sam nodded at Cas.

“So, I guess we’re driving to Kentucky,” Cas said. He kept his voice carefully neutral and Sam was left wondering what exactly he thought of that idea.

“I…do you want to?” Sam was acutely aware of the fact that Cas had dropped everything and come to help Sam. He didn’t want to push that even if having Cas close made him feel a little more secure. “I mean, I appreciate you being here, but you don’t have to if you have more important things you need to be doing. I can take a cab, or a bus if I need to.”

“Sam, listen to me. I don’t mind. I want to do this. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

“You really don’t mind? I feel like I’m asking an awful lot of you these last few days.”

“I’m sure. We’ll leave tomorrow and stay the night there. That way we can be on time the next day.”

Sam nodded. In two day’s time he would be back to learning how to do all the things he thought he had mastered a long time ago.

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