Mulch, just getting it up...
It's just another thing to not talk about. That would just get him strange looks, and be more trouble than it's worth explaining. That normal people shutter their eyes from, pretend doesn't happen.
Most people just walking around, not seeing the monsters in the dark, not seeing anything they don't want to see, or just too caught up in what other people might think of them to pay any attention to anything beyond them.
But maybe they know, at the back of their minds, just past admitting it, and you can get it out of them if you're subtle about it. And Dad shows him how, get talking with people, maybe share a drink or two, get them relaxed or talkative, and get the local gossip. Joke about scary stories, things that are obviously high school pranks, and get them to ernestly confide all the places they wouldn't go after dark. Not saying there's anything there, of course.
Dad gets him to ask around with the kids at each of the towns they move into. Kids are more likely than adults to tell ghosts stories.
It also gets him laid.
The same people who are telling him where the local haunted house is, the strange creature in the wood, the old well you don't hang out after dark, also tell him who the 'easy' girls are round school, the bathroom you don't want to be seen hanging out at, the dodgy guys who are always good for a few bucks, the address of a woman who really likes highschoolers, who the best cocksuckers in his grade are...
I think I've been concentrating too much on acts, or pairings, or kinks & crack cliches.
And not enough on... situations. Places. Where they've wandered, where they're going.
Driving up the California coastal highway at night, in the back seat, awake, while radio music plays. Wanting to see Mt Shasta, but not asking where it is, just peering at shapes of hills in the darkness, and wondering if it's even possible to see, if it's one of the strangely even triangles in the darkness.
(music: Radiohead Street Spirit)
What I was thinking of - dark roads, and white lines, going off into the distance. An image that doesn't show anywhere in this. This is early episode, while Sam is still raw with Jess's loss, damp with tears, heavy with sorrow, weary and wanting sleep without dreams.
Sam still hadn't been sleeping. Lost in a fog of uncertainty, sleep deprivation and grief. A face that seemed familiar in one light, a stranger the next. Four years gone, and Sammy wasn't someone he knew anymore.
There wasn't any point in stopping.
He'd drive, drive for nearly two days until he couldn't see anymore, til they found a motel and walk in, get the late night special, the early bird, whatever was going, wash off the stink of the road and fall asleep with daylight streaming in through slat windows, sleep for 15 hours, waking occasionally, drowsy with sleep, reflexively checking the room for intruders, for Dad, and relaxing when he sees Sam in the bed across from him, watching TV, checking his laptop.
Sam sleeps short and restless, napping like a cat, usually in the seat of the Impala, jerking awake as often as not, black rings lingering under his eyes, and Dean doesn't offer to let him drive.
Dean is cautious around Sam, drawing him into banter when he's okay with it, relieved by the longer and longer sparks of normality (critiquing his taste in music, clothes, food, girls), but recognising that Sam needs his space now, Dean turns the music up to fill the silence.
For someone who seems as keen on talking as Sam, he keeps an awful lot bottled up. But he's always played it close to the chest (waking up one day to find he'd thrown down his old life, and had a new one in his hand), he'd been more inclined to the quiet brood, and with Sam delicate like this, unreadable like this, Dean doesn't want to push him too far. He doesn't look too closely into his brothers eyes, for fear of seeing - nothing. Blank, glazed windows to the soul. When he can push him, when Sam bursts out with sorrow, anger, regret - this is hopeful, signs of thaw. Markers he can read in those deep pools.
So he does what he can, lets Sam sleep in the Impala as much as possible, wakes him from his nightmares, and teases him as mercilessly as he can when he's up to it, and waits for his brother to piece himself together.
weak