SPN FIC - Light
For Kimmer1227. And yeah, there's a plot. And angst. 'Cause that's me.
Characters: Dean and Morgan (OFC)
Pairing: see above
Rating: R, for language and adult situations
Spoilers: none
Length: 4703 words
LIGHT
By Carol Davis
Dean's only been freaked out this bad two times before.
Both of those times, he killed himself.
He's not gonna go that far this time - he isn't - but there's no part of this that's good, and he'll lay money it's gonna get a lot worse before it's over. That's just the way things go for him. Bad to worse, and worse yet, right on into…
FUBAR. Dad taught him that, years ago. Fucked up beyond all recognition. Dean might as well have had it tattooed on his forehead, because no matter where he goes or what he does, he attracts shit like a magnet.
Nobody's said this was an accident, or the luck of the draw, or anything even remotely resembling positive. Or even neutral. Sam and Bobby both think he brought this on himself because he's…well, because he's Dean. Because he's the poster boy for FUBAR. But goddammit, it wasn't his fault. He didn't open the little carved box, he touched it, that's all, just touched it. It wasn't one of the ones Bobby made for Dad, nice and secure and solid, it was old - centuries old, maybe - and mice or something had gotten at it, so when he touched it, it fell apart.
Freaking Dad, for collecting that shit anyway. He couldn't have destroyed it? No, he had to gather up tons of it and bring it to that damn storage unit. Probably stood there in the dark, looking around at all of it like he was the fucking king of…
There's a small sound.
He listens, and there it is again.
Paper.
She's reading a goddamn magazine. He's BLIND, and she's reading a fucking magazine.
He can hear it, right? Hear the pages turning. That's a small sound, and he can hear it okay. He's not losing his hearing along with his sight. Because if that happened, if he was blind and deaf, then that would be it, that would be…
He can't be blind and deaf.
Can't be locked up inside his own head like it's a little box.
Can't.
Please…
His hand is on his belly, against the core of him. It feels like things are spinning in there, like it's a black hole.
Can't. Please, I can't.
The bed shifts a little, and Morgan's hand comes to rest on top of his. "Dean," she says softly. "Slow down. Slow down, okay? You're hyperventilating."
He can hear that.
"Sit up," she says.
He's not sure he remembers how to sit up: how you send the right commands to your body to accomplish something like that. His arms and legs are shaking, and "sit up" doesn't seem like something he can do. But she's got control of things, and she gets an arm underneath him and hoists him up.
The sitting doesn't last long. He starts to fold into himself. But she's still there, holding him up, making sounds he can hear.
Maybe Sam was right. He does need a babysitter.
Thirty-one years old, and he needs a babysitter. Because he can't take care of himself.
He wants to move, but he can't. Can't drive, that's for damn sure, even though the car's parked right outside. Can't even walk, can't burn off some miles on foot because he'd get himself run over or fall off of something or bump into shit every step he took and wouldn't that be hilarious. He can't even shut himself up in the can, because he doesn't know where it is, and he sure as hell isn't going to grope around looking for it.
"You okay?" Morgan asks.
"Yeah," he mutters. "I fucking rock."
He could put on the happy face, tell her he's fine, this is no big deal, it's just a matter of waiting for Sam and Bobby to track down the whats and wherefores of what was in that box so they can figure out how to counteract it. They both acted like that was a given, that they'd solve this - and at the same time, it's not what they want to be doing with their time, since there's still those missing people to think about - and the only thing that's open-ended is how long it'll take for them to find the answers.
A couple days? Weeks? Years?
Should've burned that damn storage unit to the ground.
He didn't realize he was doing it, but his fingers are wound into her…whatever she's wearing. "I'm okay," he mumbles, and he doesn't even convince himself.
"I'll get you some water."
He wants to say Don't go, but that's nuts. She's not leaving town, she's going to the sink. And seriously? He's acting like an idiot. Sam and Bobby will fix this. It might take a while, but they'll fix it. He'll get his sight back, and things will go back to normal
(SNAFU. Dad taught him that too. Situation normal: all fucked up.)
and they can go back to hunting whatever took those people.
Morgan wraps his hand around a cup of water. It's cold, and he can feel it sliding down his gullet as he drinks it.
"Are you hungry?" she asks.
"No. I - no."
"You sure?"
Don't go, he wants to say.
As if she heard that, she tells him, "I can order something. Have them bring it."
"There's room service?" he blurts. Twenty-seven years of this craziness, and he can count on his fingers the number of times they've stayed in a place that had room service. That's too rich for their blood. Besides, that kind of place keeps an eye on things. Phony credit cards, blood on the towels. The need to stay under the radar has kept him and Sam limited to places where, if they're lucky, there's a snack machine that doesn't eat your damn quarters.
Maybe that's his last wish. To stay in some nice place. Walk into the lobby and tell them his name is Dean Winchester.
"There's a coffee shop over at the end of the parking lot," Morgan says. "That kind of place - if it's slow, and you promise them a big enough tip, they'll bring the food over."
Oh.
"I don't -"
She moves away again, and he can hear a drawer opening, paper turning. Phone book. She uses the room phone, orders some sandwiches, some soup, some other stuff. Tells whoever's on the other end that there's a twenty in it for them.
"Twenty bucks?" he says when she hangs up.
"Don't worry about it."
Yeah, like she's an heiress. Jesus.
He can't put the cup down because he's got no idea if there's a table nearby, or exactly where it might be, and he won't grope for it. But he's breathing okay, now, at least. He's stopped feeling woozy. And he can hear. He can definitely hear. Traffic outside. Somebody walking around overhead. A TV, somewhere. Sounds like Oprah, so it's somewhere between three and four in the afternoon.
He's been blind for five hours.
He must look like he doesn't know what to do with the cup. She takes it away, and for a second he wants it back.
Get your shit together, would you? Just…get it together.
But this goes back years. How he feels.
Goes back to when he was a kid, one of those times when Dad went off somewhere and left him in charge of Sammy. Sam saw some TV show that had a blind person in it and went bumping around the room with his eyes shut, trying to figure out what it was like not to see. Of course there was an "out" to that, he could open his eyes any time he wanted, and he laughed every time he crashed into something. (Nobody was laughing too much when Dad got back and saw all the bruises.) Dean didn't go around bumping into anything, but the room was as dark as a cave when they turned off the lights to go to bed that night, and he fell into thinking.
They met a hunter, one time, who'd lost a leg. Had to work with a wheelchair, or crutches, or a prosthetic, or by hopping around, but he could work. Could shoot. Could move around, defend himself, protect others.
But blind? There's no working with that.
And it's all he's got, the hunting. He's good with cars, but without a real, solid identity, it's tough to find work as a mechanic, even short-term. Long-term, he'd have to set up a whole new self, and he doesn't even want to think about the hassle that would involve.
Blind?
Grope your way around an engine?
Somebody's gonna start handing him, It'll be fine. You'll deal - lots of people do. It's just a setback.
You'll live a good, full life.
Yeah?
Horseshit.
God, he wants to go somewhere. Get out of here. Burn some of this energy off.
Even as he thinks that, he knows it's not energy, it's fear.
Fear of what's ahead of him if Sam and Bobby can't figure this out.
Fear of being left behind in a motel room while Sam goes off to work a case. He won't even be able to research - check the Internet, or books. There can't be a lot of mystical texts in Braille. He can't drive his baby, can't patch Sam up if he gets hurt. Maybe he could walk to a coffee shop to get food, but somebody'd have to tell him how to get there.
God damn, there's no part of this that's good.
He can feel it building up again, that storm in his gut. It could get to be a Category 5 in not very much time. It could erupt, too, way worse than anything that Lilith bitch could have let loose. Take out everything in a five-mile radius.
He wants to laugh. Wants to cry.
They're quick with the food; it must have been deader than the moon at that coffee shop. Morgan tells him where the table is, and he manages to get to it from the bed and sit himself down without tripping over anything. There's a thick roast beef sandwich, meat nice and thin and juicy, some soup that's got lots of chunks of stuff, cake for dessert. He chews carefully, pretends he's alone, because it's all clumsy, it's a regular ballet of fumbling around. Nothing in Morgan's voice says she pities him; she's very matter-of-fact about everything, but that doesn't exactly help.
He kind of wants a drink. Not enough to get hammered. Enough to smooth some of the rough edges, so he can sleep.
"You must've drove like a bat out of hell," he says. "To get here that fast."
"I was in Jamestown. It's not that far."
"Oh," he says.
He really wants a drink. Getting hammered wouldn't be that bad of an idea.
"Where's -" he asks.
"Home."
He doesn't ask, and if she asked he'd say no, forget it. But before he can identify the sounds, tell her no, he doesn't want to talk to Lizzie, she's on the phone - her cell, this time - and then she's pressing it into his hand. He can hear Lizzie jabbering to nobody in particular, something about frogs and slime - she seems to like that word, slime - and bathtubs. She's had too much sugar, he thinks. Sam used to get that way on soda and candy, all wired up and bouncing off walls.
She's silent for a second, then she says, "Do you want to hear my song?"
It's some little kid song about flowers and gardens that he guesses is some kind of metaphor for people being different. She sings it way too fast, runs full speed into the end of it, chirps, "'Bye, Dean!" and then she's gone.
If Sam and Bobby don't fix this, he thinks, he'll never see her face again.
Never see anybody's face again.
He puts the phone down on the table feeling like everything inside him has burned off, like there's been a flash fire and it's all gone, nothing left but dust and char.
"Kinda tired," he says.
He'd like to sleep in the car. Stretch out on the back seat like he did when he and Sam were kids. He remembers being in there when it was hot, when the sun was high in the sky and the heat made him drowsy. Remembers stretching out on the seat with his arm for a pillow, smelling the upholstery, the ripeness of old leather, spilled food, gun oil, Dad's sweat, the lingering acrid sweetness of dead stuff that never quite goes away.
But it's colossally hot out there now, in the parking lot. The back seat of the car's probably hot enough to peel the skin off your face.
He doesn't know what he wants.
He hears Morgan gathering up what's left of their lunch, crumpling paper, taking it all away. When she's done there's a nothing that hangs in the room like those last few dry leaves that refuse to fall off a tree in November.
"Watch the TV, if you want," he says.
At least it'll fill up the silence.
Maybe she thinks that's what he wants her to do: turn on the TV. She flips through some channels, lingering a little bit on each one. Letting him figure out what the show is so he can say "Leave it there" or not. It's not like he's never listened to the TV without watching it before; there've been plenty of times when he lay belly-down on the bed with his face in the pillow while Sam channel surfed through stuff or watched a movie. Sometimes you can figure out pretty well what's going on that way, and sometimes you can't.
After a little while he really does have to go to the bathroom.
He won't do it in front of her. Fumble around, trying not to collide with the furniture, looking for a doorframe.
If she'd left to get the food, he could have done it then. Could have been done by the time she got back.
Maybe he can tell her he needs something out of the car.
Like a gun.
He sits quietly on the bed, trying to map out the room in his imagination. The outside door is to his right, beyond the other bed. The table is out past the foot of his bed, and there's a sink and a fridge close to it. To the left, he thinks.
His best guess is that the bathroom door is to his left, on a line with the foot of his bed.
He's thrown himself out of a moving vehicle a couple of times (and has the scars to prove it), and that seems like a cakewalk compared to this. Throwing yourself out of a car and dealing with some road rash is badass. Slamming into a dresser trying to find the bathroom pretty much isn't. But it's either that or eventually having a bladder control situation.
He's trying not to think about anything liquid when Morgan says, "My phone battery's running low. Charger's in the car. Be right back, okay?"
Maybe there is a God.
He's a perverse fucker, but…whatever.
If this goes on for days, he can't keep hoping she'll need something outside. That's getting ahead of the game, he tells himself as he scrambles off the bed and sticks his hands out into the void. He takes a couple of tentative steps, and yes, the doorway is right where he thought it was. Finding the toilet takes a little more groping. Luckily, he knows where to find his dick. He's pretty near done, but not quite, when he hears the door open. He pushed the bathroom door mostly shut, so she's not gonna see anything. Getting back to the bed means four steps. He can do that without tripping or bumping or falling.
People do this all the time.
One day at a time, he thinks. He can do this, for as long as it takes Bobby and Sam to find an answer.
They will find an answer.
And as soon as he gets his eyes back, he's gonna burn down that goddamn storage unit.
He shakes off, zips up, flushes. Takes a second to orient himself.
You can do this.
But when he opens the door and starts moving toward the bed, he does bump into something, good and hard, because he's moving at a pretty fast clip for a guy who can't see shit. It's her, and she latches onto him and holds him upright while his heart patters inside his chest like a scared bird. "Your duffel's there on the floor," she says. "I didn't want you to trip over it."
CLOSET, Sam, put that shit in the CLOSET, he thinks, outraged and embarrassed and pretty much fed up. He got turned around in all of that dancing around and now he's got no clue which direction the bed is in. He could step away, brush himself off like he'd bumped into some stranger out on the street, but part of him wants to…well, he wants to hang on to her. Find some kind of a safe harbor in this shitstorm. For a little bit, long enough to get his bearings. Figure out how to work this.
He isn't a useless fuckup, he tells himself, taking in air in big gulps. He can do his job. He's good at his job. He's saved a lot of people.
Even this one, sort of.
Things were sort of touchy back then, when they met, but she's his friend now. He considers the validity of that for a moment and decides, yeah, it's true. They've been okay with each other for a couple of years, ever since that day Lizzie zeroed in on him at the Wal-Mart. When he's with Liz, he kind of feels like Bird Bird or Elmo or one of those guys, like he's made of pure, 18-carat awesome. That's how she looks at him, like he's a Muppet, like he's all squooshy and friendly and knows how to sing those weird-ass little kid songs about gardens and sunbeams.
He's working on the singing part. Whenever he messes up, Liz rolls her eyes at him and corrects him.
And that's okay.
"You all right?" Morgan asks him.
Nobody's really holding anybody. They're standing there together, close enough that her hair is tickling his face.
He doesn't know, really, who kissed who first.
Or who got who over to the bed.
They made out once, that first time he and Sam went to the Lodge, but she wasn't driving the bus then and she says she doesn't remember it. He's never asked her if she wants to remember it; he's never been sure he wants to know the answer. It doesn't much matter now. They're on the bed, and although for a second he wants to ask her if she's herself or somebody else, all systems seem to be "go." Seeing would be a plus, but he's certainly done this in the dark, and that stuff about being blind enhancing your other senses seems to be true. He unlaces his boots pretty much on autopilot, dumps them to the floor, hears her shoes hit the floor almost at the same time. His shirt comes off, then whatever it was she was wearing on top.
It feels warm in here now, even though he can hear the air conditioner clanking. Really warm, like she left the door open and all the heat from outside is oozing in. The heat kind of wraps itself around him, and he starts to feel content and safe and a little drowsy, like he used to, stretching out to sleep in the back of the car, knowing everybody he cared about was nearby.
They fumble with the rest of their clothes, the two of them, making little impatient noises into each other's mouths. Finally it's all gone, all that stuff, jeans and underwear and socks, and he'll never be able to find it again.
He'd be lying if he said he remembered how she tasted that other time, what her skin felt like; there's been a lot of women in between and as cheesy as it makes him sound, they do all sort of blend in to one another.
"Do you have -" she says.
"Duffel. There's a box."
She's not gone very long, a few seconds, but while she's gone, the time hangs there around him. Then she's back, and it's like somebody woke him up, really woke him, so everything's switched on - except his eyes, dammit - and making cheerful little operational noises like machinery in an old cartoon where everything's got a face and a big, crazy grin.
He loves fucking, has purely and truly loved it ever since he bolted out of the starting gate at fifteen.
He loves touching with lips and tongue and fingers, finding small, soft places, tasting them, stroking them.
He loves the little noises she makes.
Love the ones he makes.
It's all good - really, really good. The experimenting, and the relying on something tried and true. The particulars never matter; going fast or slow, being top or bottom or sideways or upside down. On the bed, on the floor, on a table or in the tub or the back seat of the car or behind the drapes or hanging suspended up at the top of a Ferris wheel.
There's nothing, absolutely nothing, that's ever bad about fucking. Even a bad fuck is still a fuck.
And with all of that…
Sometimes it's a little bit more.
Sometimes he feels like he's suspended at the top of a Ferris wheel. Like the universe is trying to tell him something, and if he'll be quiet and be still, just for a minute, he'll be able to figure out what it is. It's been like that a couple of times in his life.
It's like that now.
He's not sure who's where, or how they got there. He can feel her heat around him, feel their sweat slippery in between them. She's looking at him, he's pretty sure, and he wishes like hell that he could look back, could see what's in her eyes. She says something and for the life of him he doesn't know what the words are or what they mean.
Cassie, he thinks, and it's not that he misses Cassie, or wants her; it's more like he remembers something that happened then and seems to be happening again.
I can do this in the dark.
I can do this in the park, he thinks when a little bit of blood's gone back to his brain.
It makes him giggle.
"What?" she asks.
"Nothing," he says.
She's lying in his arms, and her hair is tickling the side of his face. He can't see a thing, not even the little flashes of light you get sometimes when you close your eyes. They're gonna go again in a few minutes, he thinks, because that's how they're gonna get through this, the waiting for Sam and Bobby to do something, to figure this out. They'd say that figures, because he's Dean, and this is how he passes time. Drinking, eating, shooting some pool, fucking. But it's more than that. He turns his head toward Morgan as if he can see her. She smiles at him, he's pretty sure, and he smiles back.
"You okay?" she asks.
"Yeah," he murmurs. "I'm good."
He dozes a little bit.
When he wakes up, they go again, and it's as good as the first time. Maybe a little bit better, because they've mapped out some of the territory. They know where the doorways are, and the furniture, and stuff that's on the floor where it shouldn't be.
"Do you -" he starts to say.
"What?"
"Is this okay with you?"
"If it wasn't okay, I wouldn't be doing it."
"No. I mean -"
"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't okay, Dean."
He thinks that over for a minute. He's pretty sure he knows what she means, but with women, there's always that margin for error. Sometimes it's kinda wide. Sometimes you can't get past it without being shot out of a cannon.
"I'm not -"
"Dean," she says. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't okay."
He lets it go at that, mostly because he's worried about what might be on the other side of that chasm. He'll find out, eventually, he figures. But for right now…there's the dark, and there's her. That's kind of all he's got.
Sometimes he gets the feeling that the world is pretty huge. When he was a kid, sitting in the back of the car with Sam while Dad drove across the plains of Kansas or Iowa or some such place, he felt like the world was so big it would squash him like a bug. He's been out at sea past sight of land a couple of times and that was worse, so big he couldn't grasp it at all, couldn't force it to make sense.
Right now, the world feels very compact.
There's just the dark, and her. And him. Sam and Bobby are out there somewhere, but that feels like an abstraction.
Morgan kisses him and he's there for that, but he feels himself start to slide.
He wakes up again when it's dark for everyone, not only him. They make a couple of moves toward doing it a third time, but the right sparks aren't there. They do some relocating, pull down the covers, settle in underneath, push the pillows into the right kind of a shape, nestle into each other like bears getting ready to hibernate.
This is all there is, he thinks, and isn't really sure what he means.
The times he's done this, spent the whole night in someone's arms, are fewer than the times he's had room service.
If he could have this, he thinks, he'd try to make do without sight.
But then he'd never see her face.
You're a fucking Hallmark card, he thinks.
When he wakes up again there's no feeling in his right arm and he has to pee again. The dark seems okay, thick and enveloping, soft. He inches away from Morgan, cringes at the pins-and-needles coming to life in his arm, and carefully makes his way to the bathroom. Finds sink, tub, towel rack, little bars of soap, towels, toilet paper. His body is sticky and a little rank with sweat. He considers things for a moment, then feels his way back to the tub and turns on the water.
He's been standing under the warm spray for a couple of minutes when he realizes he can see. Not much, because he shut the door to keep from waking her, and the bathroom doesn't have a window. But he can make out shapes: the shower head, his hands, the spigot down in the tub, his feet.
He can see.
It's over. Sam and Bobby figured it out, and it took them a lot less time than he thought. Probably a lot less than they thought.
He looks around. Turns off the water, opens the shower curtain, picks out the towel rack, the towels, the door.
He can see.
Halle-fuckin'-lujah, he thinks, but in a way he feels like he's lost something.
He sees the door open, sees the small spill of light from the other room.
Her face.
"You okay?" she asks.
"Yeah," he says, and the way she smiles makes him a little bit scared. Her gaze drifts a little, takes in the landscape. That's something that usually makes him preen. He's not unaware of what he looks like. But maybe she's checking things out, still making sure there's nothing up ahead that he's going to pratfall over.
If there is, he'll deal.
She looks a little sleepy, and her hair is all over the place. She's not a goddess, naked; but on the other hand, she is. And she's naked.
With any luck, Sam and Bobby will stay wherever the hell they're at until morning.
"Yeah," Dean says. "I'm good."
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
Characters: Dean and Morgan (OFC)
Pairing: see above
Rating: R, for language and adult situations
Spoilers: none
Length: 4703 words
LIGHT
By Carol Davis
Dean's only been freaked out this bad two times before.
Both of those times, he killed himself.
He's not gonna go that far this time - he isn't - but there's no part of this that's good, and he'll lay money it's gonna get a lot worse before it's over. That's just the way things go for him. Bad to worse, and worse yet, right on into…
FUBAR. Dad taught him that, years ago. Fucked up beyond all recognition. Dean might as well have had it tattooed on his forehead, because no matter where he goes or what he does, he attracts shit like a magnet.
Nobody's said this was an accident, or the luck of the draw, or anything even remotely resembling positive. Or even neutral. Sam and Bobby both think he brought this on himself because he's…well, because he's Dean. Because he's the poster boy for FUBAR. But goddammit, it wasn't his fault. He didn't open the little carved box, he touched it, that's all, just touched it. It wasn't one of the ones Bobby made for Dad, nice and secure and solid, it was old - centuries old, maybe - and mice or something had gotten at it, so when he touched it, it fell apart.
Freaking Dad, for collecting that shit anyway. He couldn't have destroyed it? No, he had to gather up tons of it and bring it to that damn storage unit. Probably stood there in the dark, looking around at all of it like he was the fucking king of…
There's a small sound.
He listens, and there it is again.
Paper.
She's reading a goddamn magazine. He's BLIND, and she's reading a fucking magazine.
He can hear it, right? Hear the pages turning. That's a small sound, and he can hear it okay. He's not losing his hearing along with his sight. Because if that happened, if he was blind and deaf, then that would be it, that would be…
He can't be blind and deaf.
Can't be locked up inside his own head like it's a little box.
Can't.
Please…
His hand is on his belly, against the core of him. It feels like things are spinning in there, like it's a black hole.
Can't. Please, I can't.
The bed shifts a little, and Morgan's hand comes to rest on top of his. "Dean," she says softly. "Slow down. Slow down, okay? You're hyperventilating."
He can hear that.
"Sit up," she says.
He's not sure he remembers how to sit up: how you send the right commands to your body to accomplish something like that. His arms and legs are shaking, and "sit up" doesn't seem like something he can do. But she's got control of things, and she gets an arm underneath him and hoists him up.
The sitting doesn't last long. He starts to fold into himself. But she's still there, holding him up, making sounds he can hear.
Maybe Sam was right. He does need a babysitter.
Thirty-one years old, and he needs a babysitter. Because he can't take care of himself.
He wants to move, but he can't. Can't drive, that's for damn sure, even though the car's parked right outside. Can't even walk, can't burn off some miles on foot because he'd get himself run over or fall off of something or bump into shit every step he took and wouldn't that be hilarious. He can't even shut himself up in the can, because he doesn't know where it is, and he sure as hell isn't going to grope around looking for it.
"You okay?" Morgan asks.
"Yeah," he mutters. "I fucking rock."
He could put on the happy face, tell her he's fine, this is no big deal, it's just a matter of waiting for Sam and Bobby to track down the whats and wherefores of what was in that box so they can figure out how to counteract it. They both acted like that was a given, that they'd solve this - and at the same time, it's not what they want to be doing with their time, since there's still those missing people to think about - and the only thing that's open-ended is how long it'll take for them to find the answers.
A couple days? Weeks? Years?
Should've burned that damn storage unit to the ground.
He didn't realize he was doing it, but his fingers are wound into her…whatever she's wearing. "I'm okay," he mumbles, and he doesn't even convince himself.
"I'll get you some water."
He wants to say Don't go, but that's nuts. She's not leaving town, she's going to the sink. And seriously? He's acting like an idiot. Sam and Bobby will fix this. It might take a while, but they'll fix it. He'll get his sight back, and things will go back to normal
(SNAFU. Dad taught him that too. Situation normal: all fucked up.)
and they can go back to hunting whatever took those people.
Morgan wraps his hand around a cup of water. It's cold, and he can feel it sliding down his gullet as he drinks it.
"Are you hungry?" she asks.
"No. I - no."
"You sure?"
Don't go, he wants to say.
As if she heard that, she tells him, "I can order something. Have them bring it."
"There's room service?" he blurts. Twenty-seven years of this craziness, and he can count on his fingers the number of times they've stayed in a place that had room service. That's too rich for their blood. Besides, that kind of place keeps an eye on things. Phony credit cards, blood on the towels. The need to stay under the radar has kept him and Sam limited to places where, if they're lucky, there's a snack machine that doesn't eat your damn quarters.
Maybe that's his last wish. To stay in some nice place. Walk into the lobby and tell them his name is Dean Winchester.
"There's a coffee shop over at the end of the parking lot," Morgan says. "That kind of place - if it's slow, and you promise them a big enough tip, they'll bring the food over."
Oh.
"I don't -"
She moves away again, and he can hear a drawer opening, paper turning. Phone book. She uses the room phone, orders some sandwiches, some soup, some other stuff. Tells whoever's on the other end that there's a twenty in it for them.
"Twenty bucks?" he says when she hangs up.
"Don't worry about it."
Yeah, like she's an heiress. Jesus.
He can't put the cup down because he's got no idea if there's a table nearby, or exactly where it might be, and he won't grope for it. But he's breathing okay, now, at least. He's stopped feeling woozy. And he can hear. He can definitely hear. Traffic outside. Somebody walking around overhead. A TV, somewhere. Sounds like Oprah, so it's somewhere between three and four in the afternoon.
He's been blind for five hours.
He must look like he doesn't know what to do with the cup. She takes it away, and for a second he wants it back.
Get your shit together, would you? Just…get it together.
But this goes back years. How he feels.
Goes back to when he was a kid, one of those times when Dad went off somewhere and left him in charge of Sammy. Sam saw some TV show that had a blind person in it and went bumping around the room with his eyes shut, trying to figure out what it was like not to see. Of course there was an "out" to that, he could open his eyes any time he wanted, and he laughed every time he crashed into something. (Nobody was laughing too much when Dad got back and saw all the bruises.) Dean didn't go around bumping into anything, but the room was as dark as a cave when they turned off the lights to go to bed that night, and he fell into thinking.
They met a hunter, one time, who'd lost a leg. Had to work with a wheelchair, or crutches, or a prosthetic, or by hopping around, but he could work. Could shoot. Could move around, defend himself, protect others.
But blind? There's no working with that.
And it's all he's got, the hunting. He's good with cars, but without a real, solid identity, it's tough to find work as a mechanic, even short-term. Long-term, he'd have to set up a whole new self, and he doesn't even want to think about the hassle that would involve.
Blind?
Grope your way around an engine?
Somebody's gonna start handing him, It'll be fine. You'll deal - lots of people do. It's just a setback.
You'll live a good, full life.
Yeah?
Horseshit.
God, he wants to go somewhere. Get out of here. Burn some of this energy off.
Even as he thinks that, he knows it's not energy, it's fear.
Fear of what's ahead of him if Sam and Bobby can't figure this out.
Fear of being left behind in a motel room while Sam goes off to work a case. He won't even be able to research - check the Internet, or books. There can't be a lot of mystical texts in Braille. He can't drive his baby, can't patch Sam up if he gets hurt. Maybe he could walk to a coffee shop to get food, but somebody'd have to tell him how to get there.
God damn, there's no part of this that's good.
He can feel it building up again, that storm in his gut. It could get to be a Category 5 in not very much time. It could erupt, too, way worse than anything that Lilith bitch could have let loose. Take out everything in a five-mile radius.
He wants to laugh. Wants to cry.
They're quick with the food; it must have been deader than the moon at that coffee shop. Morgan tells him where the table is, and he manages to get to it from the bed and sit himself down without tripping over anything. There's a thick roast beef sandwich, meat nice and thin and juicy, some soup that's got lots of chunks of stuff, cake for dessert. He chews carefully, pretends he's alone, because it's all clumsy, it's a regular ballet of fumbling around. Nothing in Morgan's voice says she pities him; she's very matter-of-fact about everything, but that doesn't exactly help.
He kind of wants a drink. Not enough to get hammered. Enough to smooth some of the rough edges, so he can sleep.
"You must've drove like a bat out of hell," he says. "To get here that fast."
"I was in Jamestown. It's not that far."
"Oh," he says.
He really wants a drink. Getting hammered wouldn't be that bad of an idea.
"Where's -" he asks.
"Home."
He doesn't ask, and if she asked he'd say no, forget it. But before he can identify the sounds, tell her no, he doesn't want to talk to Lizzie, she's on the phone - her cell, this time - and then she's pressing it into his hand. He can hear Lizzie jabbering to nobody in particular, something about frogs and slime - she seems to like that word, slime - and bathtubs. She's had too much sugar, he thinks. Sam used to get that way on soda and candy, all wired up and bouncing off walls.
She's silent for a second, then she says, "Do you want to hear my song?"
It's some little kid song about flowers and gardens that he guesses is some kind of metaphor for people being different. She sings it way too fast, runs full speed into the end of it, chirps, "'Bye, Dean!" and then she's gone.
If Sam and Bobby don't fix this, he thinks, he'll never see her face again.
Never see anybody's face again.
He puts the phone down on the table feeling like everything inside him has burned off, like there's been a flash fire and it's all gone, nothing left but dust and char.
"Kinda tired," he says.
He'd like to sleep in the car. Stretch out on the back seat like he did when he and Sam were kids. He remembers being in there when it was hot, when the sun was high in the sky and the heat made him drowsy. Remembers stretching out on the seat with his arm for a pillow, smelling the upholstery, the ripeness of old leather, spilled food, gun oil, Dad's sweat, the lingering acrid sweetness of dead stuff that never quite goes away.
But it's colossally hot out there now, in the parking lot. The back seat of the car's probably hot enough to peel the skin off your face.
He doesn't know what he wants.
He hears Morgan gathering up what's left of their lunch, crumpling paper, taking it all away. When she's done there's a nothing that hangs in the room like those last few dry leaves that refuse to fall off a tree in November.
"Watch the TV, if you want," he says.
At least it'll fill up the silence.
Maybe she thinks that's what he wants her to do: turn on the TV. She flips through some channels, lingering a little bit on each one. Letting him figure out what the show is so he can say "Leave it there" or not. It's not like he's never listened to the TV without watching it before; there've been plenty of times when he lay belly-down on the bed with his face in the pillow while Sam channel surfed through stuff or watched a movie. Sometimes you can figure out pretty well what's going on that way, and sometimes you can't.
After a little while he really does have to go to the bathroom.
He won't do it in front of her. Fumble around, trying not to collide with the furniture, looking for a doorframe.
If she'd left to get the food, he could have done it then. Could have been done by the time she got back.
Maybe he can tell her he needs something out of the car.
Like a gun.
He sits quietly on the bed, trying to map out the room in his imagination. The outside door is to his right, beyond the other bed. The table is out past the foot of his bed, and there's a sink and a fridge close to it. To the left, he thinks.
His best guess is that the bathroom door is to his left, on a line with the foot of his bed.
He's thrown himself out of a moving vehicle a couple of times (and has the scars to prove it), and that seems like a cakewalk compared to this. Throwing yourself out of a car and dealing with some road rash is badass. Slamming into a dresser trying to find the bathroom pretty much isn't. But it's either that or eventually having a bladder control situation.
He's trying not to think about anything liquid when Morgan says, "My phone battery's running low. Charger's in the car. Be right back, okay?"
Maybe there is a God.
He's a perverse fucker, but…whatever.
If this goes on for days, he can't keep hoping she'll need something outside. That's getting ahead of the game, he tells himself as he scrambles off the bed and sticks his hands out into the void. He takes a couple of tentative steps, and yes, the doorway is right where he thought it was. Finding the toilet takes a little more groping. Luckily, he knows where to find his dick. He's pretty near done, but not quite, when he hears the door open. He pushed the bathroom door mostly shut, so she's not gonna see anything. Getting back to the bed means four steps. He can do that without tripping or bumping or falling.
People do this all the time.
One day at a time, he thinks. He can do this, for as long as it takes Bobby and Sam to find an answer.
They will find an answer.
And as soon as he gets his eyes back, he's gonna burn down that goddamn storage unit.
He shakes off, zips up, flushes. Takes a second to orient himself.
You can do this.
But when he opens the door and starts moving toward the bed, he does bump into something, good and hard, because he's moving at a pretty fast clip for a guy who can't see shit. It's her, and she latches onto him and holds him upright while his heart patters inside his chest like a scared bird. "Your duffel's there on the floor," she says. "I didn't want you to trip over it."
CLOSET, Sam, put that shit in the CLOSET, he thinks, outraged and embarrassed and pretty much fed up. He got turned around in all of that dancing around and now he's got no clue which direction the bed is in. He could step away, brush himself off like he'd bumped into some stranger out on the street, but part of him wants to…well, he wants to hang on to her. Find some kind of a safe harbor in this shitstorm. For a little bit, long enough to get his bearings. Figure out how to work this.
He isn't a useless fuckup, he tells himself, taking in air in big gulps. He can do his job. He's good at his job. He's saved a lot of people.
Even this one, sort of.
Things were sort of touchy back then, when they met, but she's his friend now. He considers the validity of that for a moment and decides, yeah, it's true. They've been okay with each other for a couple of years, ever since that day Lizzie zeroed in on him at the Wal-Mart. When he's with Liz, he kind of feels like Bird Bird or Elmo or one of those guys, like he's made of pure, 18-carat awesome. That's how she looks at him, like he's a Muppet, like he's all squooshy and friendly and knows how to sing those weird-ass little kid songs about gardens and sunbeams.
He's working on the singing part. Whenever he messes up, Liz rolls her eyes at him and corrects him.
And that's okay.
"You all right?" Morgan asks him.
Nobody's really holding anybody. They're standing there together, close enough that her hair is tickling his face.
He doesn't know, really, who kissed who first.
Or who got who over to the bed.
They made out once, that first time he and Sam went to the Lodge, but she wasn't driving the bus then and she says she doesn't remember it. He's never asked her if she wants to remember it; he's never been sure he wants to know the answer. It doesn't much matter now. They're on the bed, and although for a second he wants to ask her if she's herself or somebody else, all systems seem to be "go." Seeing would be a plus, but he's certainly done this in the dark, and that stuff about being blind enhancing your other senses seems to be true. He unlaces his boots pretty much on autopilot, dumps them to the floor, hears her shoes hit the floor almost at the same time. His shirt comes off, then whatever it was she was wearing on top.
It feels warm in here now, even though he can hear the air conditioner clanking. Really warm, like she left the door open and all the heat from outside is oozing in. The heat kind of wraps itself around him, and he starts to feel content and safe and a little drowsy, like he used to, stretching out to sleep in the back of the car, knowing everybody he cared about was nearby.
They fumble with the rest of their clothes, the two of them, making little impatient noises into each other's mouths. Finally it's all gone, all that stuff, jeans and underwear and socks, and he'll never be able to find it again.
He'd be lying if he said he remembered how she tasted that other time, what her skin felt like; there's been a lot of women in between and as cheesy as it makes him sound, they do all sort of blend in to one another.
"Do you have -" she says.
"Duffel. There's a box."
She's not gone very long, a few seconds, but while she's gone, the time hangs there around him. Then she's back, and it's like somebody woke him up, really woke him, so everything's switched on - except his eyes, dammit - and making cheerful little operational noises like machinery in an old cartoon where everything's got a face and a big, crazy grin.
He loves fucking, has purely and truly loved it ever since he bolted out of the starting gate at fifteen.
He loves touching with lips and tongue and fingers, finding small, soft places, tasting them, stroking them.
He loves the little noises she makes.
Love the ones he makes.
It's all good - really, really good. The experimenting, and the relying on something tried and true. The particulars never matter; going fast or slow, being top or bottom or sideways or upside down. On the bed, on the floor, on a table or in the tub or the back seat of the car or behind the drapes or hanging suspended up at the top of a Ferris wheel.
There's nothing, absolutely nothing, that's ever bad about fucking. Even a bad fuck is still a fuck.
And with all of that…
Sometimes it's a little bit more.
Sometimes he feels like he's suspended at the top of a Ferris wheel. Like the universe is trying to tell him something, and if he'll be quiet and be still, just for a minute, he'll be able to figure out what it is. It's been like that a couple of times in his life.
It's like that now.
He's not sure who's where, or how they got there. He can feel her heat around him, feel their sweat slippery in between them. She's looking at him, he's pretty sure, and he wishes like hell that he could look back, could see what's in her eyes. She says something and for the life of him he doesn't know what the words are or what they mean.
Cassie, he thinks, and it's not that he misses Cassie, or wants her; it's more like he remembers something that happened then and seems to be happening again.
I can do this in the dark.
I can do this in the park, he thinks when a little bit of blood's gone back to his brain.
It makes him giggle.
"What?" she asks.
"Nothing," he says.
She's lying in his arms, and her hair is tickling the side of his face. He can't see a thing, not even the little flashes of light you get sometimes when you close your eyes. They're gonna go again in a few minutes, he thinks, because that's how they're gonna get through this, the waiting for Sam and Bobby to do something, to figure this out. They'd say that figures, because he's Dean, and this is how he passes time. Drinking, eating, shooting some pool, fucking. But it's more than that. He turns his head toward Morgan as if he can see her. She smiles at him, he's pretty sure, and he smiles back.
"You okay?" she asks.
"Yeah," he murmurs. "I'm good."
He dozes a little bit.
When he wakes up, they go again, and it's as good as the first time. Maybe a little bit better, because they've mapped out some of the territory. They know where the doorways are, and the furniture, and stuff that's on the floor where it shouldn't be.
"Do you -" he starts to say.
"What?"
"Is this okay with you?"
"If it wasn't okay, I wouldn't be doing it."
"No. I mean -"
"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't okay, Dean."
He thinks that over for a minute. He's pretty sure he knows what she means, but with women, there's always that margin for error. Sometimes it's kinda wide. Sometimes you can't get past it without being shot out of a cannon.
"I'm not -"
"Dean," she says. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't okay."
He lets it go at that, mostly because he's worried about what might be on the other side of that chasm. He'll find out, eventually, he figures. But for right now…there's the dark, and there's her. That's kind of all he's got.
Sometimes he gets the feeling that the world is pretty huge. When he was a kid, sitting in the back of the car with Sam while Dad drove across the plains of Kansas or Iowa or some such place, he felt like the world was so big it would squash him like a bug. He's been out at sea past sight of land a couple of times and that was worse, so big he couldn't grasp it at all, couldn't force it to make sense.
Right now, the world feels very compact.
There's just the dark, and her. And him. Sam and Bobby are out there somewhere, but that feels like an abstraction.
Morgan kisses him and he's there for that, but he feels himself start to slide.
He wakes up again when it's dark for everyone, not only him. They make a couple of moves toward doing it a third time, but the right sparks aren't there. They do some relocating, pull down the covers, settle in underneath, push the pillows into the right kind of a shape, nestle into each other like bears getting ready to hibernate.
This is all there is, he thinks, and isn't really sure what he means.
The times he's done this, spent the whole night in someone's arms, are fewer than the times he's had room service.
If he could have this, he thinks, he'd try to make do without sight.
But then he'd never see her face.
You're a fucking Hallmark card, he thinks.
When he wakes up again there's no feeling in his right arm and he has to pee again. The dark seems okay, thick and enveloping, soft. He inches away from Morgan, cringes at the pins-and-needles coming to life in his arm, and carefully makes his way to the bathroom. Finds sink, tub, towel rack, little bars of soap, towels, toilet paper. His body is sticky and a little rank with sweat. He considers things for a moment, then feels his way back to the tub and turns on the water.
He's been standing under the warm spray for a couple of minutes when he realizes he can see. Not much, because he shut the door to keep from waking her, and the bathroom doesn't have a window. But he can make out shapes: the shower head, his hands, the spigot down in the tub, his feet.
He can see.
It's over. Sam and Bobby figured it out, and it took them a lot less time than he thought. Probably a lot less than they thought.
He looks around. Turns off the water, opens the shower curtain, picks out the towel rack, the towels, the door.
He can see.
Halle-fuckin'-lujah, he thinks, but in a way he feels like he's lost something.
He sees the door open, sees the small spill of light from the other room.
Her face.
"You okay?" she asks.
"Yeah," he says, and the way she smiles makes him a little bit scared. Her gaze drifts a little, takes in the landscape. That's something that usually makes him preen. He's not unaware of what he looks like. But maybe she's checking things out, still making sure there's nothing up ahead that he's going to pratfall over.
If there is, he'll deal.
She looks a little sleepy, and her hair is all over the place. She's not a goddess, naked; but on the other hand, she is. And she's naked.
With any luck, Sam and Bobby will stay wherever the hell they're at until morning.
"Yeah," Dean says. "I'm good."
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