Fic: Shapeless light 1/1
Title: Shapeless light
Author: wave_obscura
Genre: Het (Sam/Jess), H/C
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3,500
Summary: Jess’s boyfriend was blind. And then he wasn’t.
Warnings/Spoilers: blind!Sam, Stanford-era, lots of embarrassingly ham-fisted symbolism.
Note: This is a remix of the wonderful rainylemons fic Deficits and Handicaps, for some long-gone remix challenge that probably occurred at hoodie_time, but I don’t quite remember. It’s not necessary to read the original fic, but you should because it’s a lot better than this one :D I feel bad because I removed all the hurt!Dean and changed plot points for my own convenience. I’m not even sure if counts as a remix anymore. It might just be fanfiction of her fanfiction. rainylemons, I hope we can still be friends!
Note 2: A few years ago I worked for the disability services office at my college, and that is where I drew my knowledge of college disability services. I have no idea how they do things at Stanford.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Shapeless light
by wave obscura
“He’s a real big guy,” Jess’s boss in the Disability Resource Center told her, on the day she and Sam met. “Long hair. Blind. Go sit in on his class, read him what’s on the board.”
Sam Winchester, she’d thought. What a ridiculous name.
He was indeed a real big guy. He sat at a fairly standard college desk, but it seemed to wrap flimsily around him like a toy. He made it look like it came from a kindergarten classroom.
He had big shoulders and a mole on his cheek and a sweet grin and stupid-looking romance novel hair. He was messing with the hem of his shirt, unwittingly exposing his incredible abdomen to the class. His eyes were hazel and vaguely directionless.
Jess was woefully unqualified for the job. It was a math class and there were symbols on the board she didn’t even know the names of.
“It’s like an infinity sign, only half of it’s missing,” she said, so-close-probably-too-close to his ear, “Well, not half, but like... part of the right side of it. Goddamn it, I’m useless at this. ‘scuse my language. I’m sorry. Christ.”
Sam smiled good-naturedly and it was cute, mysterious, novel, exciting.
“You smell good,” he said. Then he frowned. “I’m sorry. That probably sounded creepy.”
“Kinda,” she admitted.
“Well. You uh... sound good?”
“I weigh four hundred pounds,” she said.
His smile returned. “Then I’d better take you to dinner.”
***
“Hopefully getting a new dog soon,” Sam told her over Thai food, in his apartment, which was so pristine it was almost military. “My brother’s taking care of it, but he’s... anyway. Hopefully soon. It’s... well it’s a little disorienting not to have one.”
He finished his bite, carefully wiped his face and went to his nightstand. He came back to the table with two photographs. He ran his fingertip over one of the frames, feeling its grooves. “These are my parents. John and Mary. And this is me and my big brother, Dean. Stupid that I keep their pictures, right? God, probably stupid that I’m showing them to you--I’m sorry, I don’t--”
“No, it’s alright.” She eagerly took the photographs. “Your mother is beautiful. That’s your brother? You don’t... um. He’s...”
“I know. He looks more like our mother.”
She wondered how he knew that-- from personal experience or being told. But she didn’t ask.
***
He liked to bury his nose in her hair. He never stopped touching her, really, his thumb was always grazing the back of her neck, the inside of her wrist, he was always pressing his knee into hers. She found it a little off-putting at first, him being so physical when they hardly knew each other.
“I’m sorry,” he said one day, as if he could sense her discomfort. “I just like to look at you.”
***
“How did you lose your sight?”
It seemed like the right time to ask. Sam had spent the night for the first time. They were going out for morning coffee.
He smirked. “Maybe I was born this way.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“Then how?”
“Hang gliding,” Sam said. “Into enemy territory.”
She smacked his shoulder. “Nuh-uh.”
“Okay I’m lying. But that’s a much more interesting story.”
She got the feeling he didn’t really want to tell her the truth. He was holding her by the elbow. She stopped and he stopped with her. “You don’t have to tell me. But--”
“Meningitis. When I was twelve,” He smiled wide. “See? Boring.”
***
She was in love with Sam, by the time she met his older brother. The mole on his cheek, and his big shoulders, even his romance novel hair (which she’d cut into a different shape so he looked less douchey), his sweet smile, the fact that he was brilliant, the methodical but wildly worshipful way he touched her and a million other things, too.
Which was a good thing, because Dean was suspicious as all hell. He took her by total surprise because Sam didn’t talk much about his past. She figured his parents were well-to-do and divorced and vacationing permanently somewhere in Europe and that they threw money his way out of guilt, and by extension she figured Big Brother’s first visit would be reserved and cold and awkward and dripping with obligation.
She and Sam were sharing an apartment by then. Sam had insisted on going down to greet his brother by himself. She spied from the kitchen window.
Dean jumped out of the car and crushed Sam in a hug and held him that way for a full minute or two. There was nothing man-hug about it. Dean tangled his fingers in the hair on the back of Sam’s neck and after a while held him at arm’s length and pushed his bangs away to study his face and then hugged him once more.
They came upstairs and Sam threw an arm around Jess and said proudly, “this is my girlfriend, Jess.”
“Oh Sammy,” Dean said mournfully, “She’s not gorgeous at all. You’d better let me date her instead.”
“Charming,” Jess said with a smile.
Dean shrugged. “I gotta protect my little brother.”
***
Dean had the good sense to wait until that night to grill her, after they’d made it most of the way though a bottle of Wild Turkey and Sam was soundly asleep on the sofa.
“Let me guess,” she said, reading his face. “If I hurt him, you’ll kill me?”
He stared at her, working his jaw.
Finally he said, “what’s a pretty girl like you want with a blind guy?”
There was nothing contemptuous in his voice. Cynical maybe, or maybe just scared to death of how she might answer. “Why aren’t you dating some meathead who can drive you around in his pansy-ass yellow sports car?”
“I’ve tried that. Blind guys are better in the sack.”
It was supposed to shock him, but instead Dean looked strangely prideful. Then his jaw set again.
“Seriously,” he said. “Why?”
“If you think,” she said, “if you think... well I don’t even want to know what you think.”
Dean studied her like lies might seep from her pores.
“I’ve done the yellow sports car meathead thing,” she continued, “and, but Sam... he’s... he’s just so damned... I don’t know. Sometimes-- sometimes I’ll have a 20-page paper due and I’ll want to beat my head against the wall, I’ll be so fucking stressed? And he’ll come sit down next to me, and he’ll pull me to him and hold my hands and I don’t know, he’ll say something like ‘baby your hands are like sandpaper, won’t you do your blind boyfriend a kindness and moisturize?’ And then I’m laughing.”
She bit her lip, suddenly embarrassed, but Dean was smiling.
“Good,” he said, “Cause if you hurt him I’ll kill you.”
***
During spring break Sam and Jess went camping with a group of friends. They went off alone at night, let the dog lead them a good hour down the trail. It was so dark Jess could see little else but stars and shadows.
Then they were naked and her feet were no longer touching the ground, Sam was practically fucking her into a tree. He made his way aggressively around her body, he was suddenly a Sam she barely knew and it made her heart pound.
The snap of a branch echoed through the woods-- probably a rotten tree, maybe a raccoon, but Sam went instantly tense. “Sam, what--” she began, and he covered her mouth with his hand. She could just barely make out the glint of his eyes, moving frantically, uselessly, in the darkness.
Panicked, Jess scanned the darkness for the dog. He was lying in the dirt near their feet, his head between his paws, lazy and unalarmed.
“Sam?” She mumbled beneath his hand.
“We have to leave,” he said, feeling the ground for his clothes. “We have to get out of here.”
“Sam it’s probably just--” she began, but he hissed at her to be quiet and sounded so absolutely terrified that she didn’t argue.
He held the dog with one arm and her with the other, dragging her forward, stumbling on rocks and branches. He breathed loudly through his nose, and squeezed her arm so hard his fingernails dug into her wrist bone.
“Baby,” she said finally, forcing him to stop. “You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”
He stood there a moment, gasping.
“I can’t protect you,” he said bitterly. “I can’t protect you, Jess. From anything.”
“You don’t need to protect me, Sam. It’s two thousand fucking five.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
He raised his sightless eyes to the moon. “Nevermind. Everything’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fine.”
***
Weeks later, Sam and Jess sat together on the sofa facing the window. The sky was pink and orange, almost neon with sunset. Sam’s gaze was somehow faraway, almost as if he were looking at it. Thinking.
“What do you see?” Jess asked him. She’d been dying to ask.
“What do I see?” He repeated, and tangled his fingers in her hair, snorting a little laugh. “Not much. A little bit of light. Some blobs of... shapeless light, I guess.”
“Color?”
He shook his head. “No color.”
“Do you remember?”
“Remember what?”
“Colors.”
“Yes. No need to put ice in my hands and call it blue.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.” He smiled to himself. Put his hand to her face, grazed a thumb over her lips. “One of the last things I ever saw was a double rainbow, actually. I was running a pretty mean fever but we didn’t know how sick I was yet. My brother and I were driving through the desert and it was arched all the way across the sky. So fucking bright it didn’t even look real. I woke up a month later, and... shapeless light.”
She curled up under his chin. “Shapeless light,” she said, trying to imagine what that might look like.
He smirked. “What do you see?”
“I see a big nasty zit behind your ear. Can I get it?”
He batted her away. “Nuh uh. Off.”
“Come on, it’ll be quick, I promise--”
They wrestled for a minute. Then her hands were trapped in his, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“Sam?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
He drove the knuckle of his pointer finger into one eye, hissing with pain. “My head.”
***
“No no no, he just needs a little rest,” Dean told her over the phone, “He’ll tell you if he needs a hospital, trust me. He’s okay.”
Jess shook all over. She rubbed tears off her face with the back of her hand. “He keeps throwing up. He’s hurting really bad, Dean.”
Despite her blubbering, Dean’s voice was low, calm and patient. “Just give him something to puke in, sweetheart, and go do your homework or something, okay? I’m telling you, it’s just a migraine. As long as he lays down, keeps his eyes shut, he’ll be fine.”
“I gave him a bowl,” Jess said through a fresh waves of tears. “He’s-- he’s-- he’s in so much pain. I just feel so helpless.” In the other room she could hear Sam breathing hard, spitting into the bowl. “I just wish I knew how to help him.”
“He doesn’t need any help,” Dean said kindly. He repeated, for the third or fourth time: “You don’t have to worry about him, okay? He’s a grown man, he’s not helpless, he’s not delicate, he can handle it. None of this is on you, okay, sweetheart?
She felt awful, being comforted by those words. But she was.
“Sit with him, if it makes you feel better,” Dean continued, “Or leave him alone. Trust me, he’s too miserable right now to care either way.”
“Okay,” Jess sniveled.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“He’s fine, Jess. Really.”
Jess sniffed.
“Tell him to give his brother a call when he’s up and around, alright?”
“Alright.”
“Okay, sweetheart.”
“Okay.”
She hung up. Crept back into the room and sat on the floor next to the sofa. The sound of her voice seemed to cause him pain, so she said nothing, just reached up and took his hand. It was clammy and lifeless in hers. He opened his eyes, which shone white in the darkness, white and lost and the skin around them was puffy and red.
After a while he was sick again and he jerked his hand free to hold the bowl.
She went and sat in her room, tried to finish a paper.
***
Sam could get his school books in braille sometimes, if he was lucky, but he mostly had to settle for stilted, awkward cassette tape recordings by students who worked in the Disability Resource Center. They were just starting to digitize everything, so occasionally it was an electronic voice.
Both were frustrating for Sam-- the students who couldn’t seem to pronounce even the simplest words, the robot voice that had no sense of tone or inflection.
He turned off the recording and sat hunched in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. The dog whined at his feet.
“Baby?” Jess said.
He reached out for her and she went to him. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“Baby...”
“Don’t mind me,” he apologized. “I just have a little headache.” He rubbed at his temple. The other arm he hooked around her hips. “Man.” Then both his hands were rubbing at his temples. “God they’re coming on so fucking quick.”
***
She woke one night to an empty bed.She found Sam in his chair in the living room, whispering to himself, “fuck fuck fuck.” He rubbed at his eyes, blinked, rubbed them harder.
“Sam?”
He looked up at her, and there was something wrong with his eyes. Something very, very wrong.
“What--” She began. “Sam... Sam holy shit.”
He was looking at her. He was seeing.
“Holy shit, Sam--”
He was looking at her. Looking. His eyes appeared to be horribly strained, red and watery, white mucus gathered in his lashes and tear ducts, and he blinked erratically.
“I dunno what’s wrong,” he said, rubbing again at his forehead. “They hurt. They fucking sting like you wouldn’t believe.”
Seeing his eyes focused-- focused on her-- was like looking at a different person.
She opened and shut her mouth several times. Then she said, “Call Dean.”
***
They sat up for hours. She was speechless. Dean wouldn’t answer his phone. Sam called back and called back and called back and called back until tears were splashing onto the screen of his cell.
On the umpteenth try, his voice was so shaky the voice recognition wouldn’t work.
“Call BROTHER, you piece of shit. CALL BROTHER. BRO-THER.”
He was about to throw it across the room when she caught his arm. “Just dial the number.”
This seemed to make things worse. He sank into his chair and let out a single, defeated sob.
“I... I barely remember how to read, I can’t-- I don’t which is which number is which-- I can’t-- he never ignores my calls. Never.”
“Sam,” she finally said. “Let’s try to sleep. We’ll sleep, we’ll sleep and we’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
“Something’s happened to him.”
“I’m sure he’s fine, Sam. Let’s just go to bed. Please.”
It seemed ridiculous, going to bed with her suddenly-sighted boyfriend, but nothing made sense, there was nothing tethering her to reality anymore and she just wanted to curl up and bury her face in his chest.
“It’s too much.” Sam let the phone fall to the floor between his legs. “Too much.”
“What’s too much?”
He looked at her. By now the mucus from his eyes had dried and crusted over above his cheeks.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
She had to laugh. What else was she going to do? “God, you’re not. Come to bed.”
She washed the crap out of his eyes with a damp rag, but it came back quickly, white sludge bubbling out of his tear ducts.
“Maybe you need a hospital,” she said numbly.
“No hospital,” he said. “No hospital.”
You’d think a blind man who could suddenly see would want to look at everything he could, but Sam stretched out on his back and kept his eyes closed, cracking an lid every so often to squint at the ceiling.
“Can I touch you?” He said after a while. She gave him her hand. He ran his thumb over each knuckle, over and over again. His touch was different. It felt different. She couldn’t describe why.
“It’s still me, Jess,” he said, and repeated it over and over. “It’s still me, okay? It’s still me.”
“Shut up,” she finally begged, crying. She flung the rag over the side of the bed. “Fuck, just shut up.”
***
Their apartment had old beveled windowpanes, and when the sunlight shone through them dozens of mini-rainbows would dance across the hardwood floors. She found Sam sitting on the floor the next morning, poking at one of the rainbows with a trembling hand. The dog slept at his knee.
“Sam?”
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she said. “Did Dean...?”
“No.”
Jess nodded. Stood there awkwardly.
“When I woke up this morning,” Sam said, “I wanted a fucking Caramel Macchiato so bad. The kind my brother makes fun of me for drinking? The biggest one I could find. But then I thought, what the fuck am I gonna do, cross my eyes and pretend to be blind? I mean how do I explain this to anyone?”
Jess sat on the floor in front of him, in front of her own rainbow. She let it shine on her palm, as if she were holding it. “We need to get you to a doctor. A doctor will explain it. This is something to be happy about, Sam. This is a miracle.”
Sam tensed at this. Something in him seemed to pause. He stared at the rainbow on the floor, his eyes dripping.
“No,” he said, “This is no miracle.”
“Sam--”
“Before I was just a blind kid doing the best I could. I didn’t have to do what I was brought up to do. Someone did this on purpose. And I’m a hunter again.”
“A what?”
“A hunter,” he repeated, and hunched over and rubbed at his sore eyes. “Dean wouldn’t ignore my calls unless he was dead. Or seriously hurt.”
“That’s ridiculous, Sam. Maybe he didn’t pay his bill or something.”
“He’s dead or he’s hurt.”
She stood up and looked down at his bowed head for a long time. He idly scratched the dog’s ears. Every now and then moisture seeped from his sore-looking eyes and dripped down his face, almost like tears but not quite.
“I don’t understand this, Sam. I really don’t.”
But she understood enough, because it was radiating from him in waves that seemed to physically bend the air around him.
“You’re leaving,” she said.
Sam nodded. He stood and went to her. He took both her hands and closed his eyes. “Like sandpaper,” he said. “Don’t ever change, Jessica, okay?”
She laughed a little, wishing she could promise such a thing. “Take care of yourself, Sam.”
He nodded. He opened his eyes and looked her. The soreness, the redness was rapidly disappearing now, the snotty build up, and they looked like Sam’s eyes, only they weren’t directionless anymore. They looked off east into the horizon.
“I’d cut them both out,” Sam said, “Both my eyes. If it meant I could stay here with you. If it were that simple. If my brother didn’t need--”
“Go,” Jess said. “You have to go.”
He packed a single knapsack, and he left. The dog stayed close to Sam as he had been trained to do, free of the harness but still dutifully performing his job.
Jess shut the door behind them. She felt a hole in herself where Sam used to be, but she didn’t cry, didn’t mourn, didn't grieve. He was always temporary, always a gift. He didn’t leave but simply slid away, a fading rainbow, vanished like a dream.
:::
The end.
Author: wave_obscura
Genre: Het (Sam/Jess), H/C
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3,500
Summary: Jess’s boyfriend was blind. And then he wasn’t.
Warnings/Spoilers: blind!Sam, Stanford-era, lots of embarrassingly ham-fisted symbolism.
Note: This is a remix of the wonderful rainylemons fic Deficits and Handicaps, for some long-gone remix challenge that probably occurred at hoodie_time, but I don’t quite remember. It’s not necessary to read the original fic, but you should because it’s a lot better than this one :D I feel bad because I removed all the hurt!Dean and changed plot points for my own convenience. I’m not even sure if counts as a remix anymore. It might just be fanfiction of her fanfiction. rainylemons, I hope we can still be friends!
Note 2: A few years ago I worked for the disability services office at my college, and that is where I drew my knowledge of college disability services. I have no idea how they do things at Stanford.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Shapeless light
by wave obscura
“He’s a real big guy,” Jess’s boss in the Disability Resource Center told her, on the day she and Sam met. “Long hair. Blind. Go sit in on his class, read him what’s on the board.”
Sam Winchester, she’d thought. What a ridiculous name.
He was indeed a real big guy. He sat at a fairly standard college desk, but it seemed to wrap flimsily around him like a toy. He made it look like it came from a kindergarten classroom.
He had big shoulders and a mole on his cheek and a sweet grin and stupid-looking romance novel hair. He was messing with the hem of his shirt, unwittingly exposing his incredible abdomen to the class. His eyes were hazel and vaguely directionless.
Jess was woefully unqualified for the job. It was a math class and there were symbols on the board she didn’t even know the names of.
“It’s like an infinity sign, only half of it’s missing,” she said, so-close-probably-too-close to his ear, “Well, not half, but like... part of the right side of it. Goddamn it, I’m useless at this. ‘scuse my language. I’m sorry. Christ.”
Sam smiled good-naturedly and it was cute, mysterious, novel, exciting.
“You smell good,” he said. Then he frowned. “I’m sorry. That probably sounded creepy.”
“Kinda,” she admitted.
“Well. You uh... sound good?”
“I weigh four hundred pounds,” she said.
His smile returned. “Then I’d better take you to dinner.”
***
“Hopefully getting a new dog soon,” Sam told her over Thai food, in his apartment, which was so pristine it was almost military. “My brother’s taking care of it, but he’s... anyway. Hopefully soon. It’s... well it’s a little disorienting not to have one.”
He finished his bite, carefully wiped his face and went to his nightstand. He came back to the table with two photographs. He ran his fingertip over one of the frames, feeling its grooves. “These are my parents. John and Mary. And this is me and my big brother, Dean. Stupid that I keep their pictures, right? God, probably stupid that I’m showing them to you--I’m sorry, I don’t--”
“No, it’s alright.” She eagerly took the photographs. “Your mother is beautiful. That’s your brother? You don’t... um. He’s...”
“I know. He looks more like our mother.”
She wondered how he knew that-- from personal experience or being told. But she didn’t ask.
***
He liked to bury his nose in her hair. He never stopped touching her, really, his thumb was always grazing the back of her neck, the inside of her wrist, he was always pressing his knee into hers. She found it a little off-putting at first, him being so physical when they hardly knew each other.
“I’m sorry,” he said one day, as if he could sense her discomfort. “I just like to look at you.”
***
“How did you lose your sight?”
It seemed like the right time to ask. Sam had spent the night for the first time. They were going out for morning coffee.
He smirked. “Maybe I was born this way.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“Then how?”
“Hang gliding,” Sam said. “Into enemy territory.”
She smacked his shoulder. “Nuh-uh.”
“Okay I’m lying. But that’s a much more interesting story.”
She got the feeling he didn’t really want to tell her the truth. He was holding her by the elbow. She stopped and he stopped with her. “You don’t have to tell me. But--”
“Meningitis. When I was twelve,” He smiled wide. “See? Boring.”
***
She was in love with Sam, by the time she met his older brother. The mole on his cheek, and his big shoulders, even his romance novel hair (which she’d cut into a different shape so he looked less douchey), his sweet smile, the fact that he was brilliant, the methodical but wildly worshipful way he touched her and a million other things, too.
Which was a good thing, because Dean was suspicious as all hell. He took her by total surprise because Sam didn’t talk much about his past. She figured his parents were well-to-do and divorced and vacationing permanently somewhere in Europe and that they threw money his way out of guilt, and by extension she figured Big Brother’s first visit would be reserved and cold and awkward and dripping with obligation.
She and Sam were sharing an apartment by then. Sam had insisted on going down to greet his brother by himself. She spied from the kitchen window.
Dean jumped out of the car and crushed Sam in a hug and held him that way for a full minute or two. There was nothing man-hug about it. Dean tangled his fingers in the hair on the back of Sam’s neck and after a while held him at arm’s length and pushed his bangs away to study his face and then hugged him once more.
They came upstairs and Sam threw an arm around Jess and said proudly, “this is my girlfriend, Jess.”
“Oh Sammy,” Dean said mournfully, “She’s not gorgeous at all. You’d better let me date her instead.”
“Charming,” Jess said with a smile.
Dean shrugged. “I gotta protect my little brother.”
***
Dean had the good sense to wait until that night to grill her, after they’d made it most of the way though a bottle of Wild Turkey and Sam was soundly asleep on the sofa.
“Let me guess,” she said, reading his face. “If I hurt him, you’ll kill me?”
He stared at her, working his jaw.
Finally he said, “what’s a pretty girl like you want with a blind guy?”
There was nothing contemptuous in his voice. Cynical maybe, or maybe just scared to death of how she might answer. “Why aren’t you dating some meathead who can drive you around in his pansy-ass yellow sports car?”
“I’ve tried that. Blind guys are better in the sack.”
It was supposed to shock him, but instead Dean looked strangely prideful. Then his jaw set again.
“Seriously,” he said. “Why?”
“If you think,” she said, “if you think... well I don’t even want to know what you think.”
Dean studied her like lies might seep from her pores.
“I’ve done the yellow sports car meathead thing,” she continued, “and, but Sam... he’s... he’s just so damned... I don’t know. Sometimes-- sometimes I’ll have a 20-page paper due and I’ll want to beat my head against the wall, I’ll be so fucking stressed? And he’ll come sit down next to me, and he’ll pull me to him and hold my hands and I don’t know, he’ll say something like ‘baby your hands are like sandpaper, won’t you do your blind boyfriend a kindness and moisturize?’ And then I’m laughing.”
She bit her lip, suddenly embarrassed, but Dean was smiling.
“Good,” he said, “Cause if you hurt him I’ll kill you.”
***
During spring break Sam and Jess went camping with a group of friends. They went off alone at night, let the dog lead them a good hour down the trail. It was so dark Jess could see little else but stars and shadows.
Then they were naked and her feet were no longer touching the ground, Sam was practically fucking her into a tree. He made his way aggressively around her body, he was suddenly a Sam she barely knew and it made her heart pound.
The snap of a branch echoed through the woods-- probably a rotten tree, maybe a raccoon, but Sam went instantly tense. “Sam, what--” she began, and he covered her mouth with his hand. She could just barely make out the glint of his eyes, moving frantically, uselessly, in the darkness.
Panicked, Jess scanned the darkness for the dog. He was lying in the dirt near their feet, his head between his paws, lazy and unalarmed.
“Sam?” She mumbled beneath his hand.
“We have to leave,” he said, feeling the ground for his clothes. “We have to get out of here.”
“Sam it’s probably just--” she began, but he hissed at her to be quiet and sounded so absolutely terrified that she didn’t argue.
He held the dog with one arm and her with the other, dragging her forward, stumbling on rocks and branches. He breathed loudly through his nose, and squeezed her arm so hard his fingernails dug into her wrist bone.
“Baby,” she said finally, forcing him to stop. “You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”
He stood there a moment, gasping.
“I can’t protect you,” he said bitterly. “I can’t protect you, Jess. From anything.”
“You don’t need to protect me, Sam. It’s two thousand fucking five.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
He raised his sightless eyes to the moon. “Nevermind. Everything’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fine.”
***
Weeks later, Sam and Jess sat together on the sofa facing the window. The sky was pink and orange, almost neon with sunset. Sam’s gaze was somehow faraway, almost as if he were looking at it. Thinking.
“What do you see?” Jess asked him. She’d been dying to ask.
“What do I see?” He repeated, and tangled his fingers in her hair, snorting a little laugh. “Not much. A little bit of light. Some blobs of... shapeless light, I guess.”
“Color?”
He shook his head. “No color.”
“Do you remember?”
“Remember what?”
“Colors.”
“Yes. No need to put ice in my hands and call it blue.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.” He smiled to himself. Put his hand to her face, grazed a thumb over her lips. “One of the last things I ever saw was a double rainbow, actually. I was running a pretty mean fever but we didn’t know how sick I was yet. My brother and I were driving through the desert and it was arched all the way across the sky. So fucking bright it didn’t even look real. I woke up a month later, and... shapeless light.”
She curled up under his chin. “Shapeless light,” she said, trying to imagine what that might look like.
He smirked. “What do you see?”
“I see a big nasty zit behind your ear. Can I get it?”
He batted her away. “Nuh uh. Off.”
“Come on, it’ll be quick, I promise--”
They wrestled for a minute. Then her hands were trapped in his, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“Sam?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
He drove the knuckle of his pointer finger into one eye, hissing with pain. “My head.”
***
“No no no, he just needs a little rest,” Dean told her over the phone, “He’ll tell you if he needs a hospital, trust me. He’s okay.”
Jess shook all over. She rubbed tears off her face with the back of her hand. “He keeps throwing up. He’s hurting really bad, Dean.”
Despite her blubbering, Dean’s voice was low, calm and patient. “Just give him something to puke in, sweetheart, and go do your homework or something, okay? I’m telling you, it’s just a migraine. As long as he lays down, keeps his eyes shut, he’ll be fine.”
“I gave him a bowl,” Jess said through a fresh waves of tears. “He’s-- he’s-- he’s in so much pain. I just feel so helpless.” In the other room she could hear Sam breathing hard, spitting into the bowl. “I just wish I knew how to help him.”
“He doesn’t need any help,” Dean said kindly. He repeated, for the third or fourth time: “You don’t have to worry about him, okay? He’s a grown man, he’s not helpless, he’s not delicate, he can handle it. None of this is on you, okay, sweetheart?
She felt awful, being comforted by those words. But she was.
“Sit with him, if it makes you feel better,” Dean continued, “Or leave him alone. Trust me, he’s too miserable right now to care either way.”
“Okay,” Jess sniveled.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“He’s fine, Jess. Really.”
Jess sniffed.
“Tell him to give his brother a call when he’s up and around, alright?”
“Alright.”
“Okay, sweetheart.”
“Okay.”
She hung up. Crept back into the room and sat on the floor next to the sofa. The sound of her voice seemed to cause him pain, so she said nothing, just reached up and took his hand. It was clammy and lifeless in hers. He opened his eyes, which shone white in the darkness, white and lost and the skin around them was puffy and red.
After a while he was sick again and he jerked his hand free to hold the bowl.
She went and sat in her room, tried to finish a paper.
***
Sam could get his school books in braille sometimes, if he was lucky, but he mostly had to settle for stilted, awkward cassette tape recordings by students who worked in the Disability Resource Center. They were just starting to digitize everything, so occasionally it was an electronic voice.
Both were frustrating for Sam-- the students who couldn’t seem to pronounce even the simplest words, the robot voice that had no sense of tone or inflection.
He turned off the recording and sat hunched in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. The dog whined at his feet.
“Baby?” Jess said.
He reached out for her and she went to him. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“Baby...”
“Don’t mind me,” he apologized. “I just have a little headache.” He rubbed at his temple. The other arm he hooked around her hips. “Man.” Then both his hands were rubbing at his temples. “God they’re coming on so fucking quick.”
***
She woke one night to an empty bed.She found Sam in his chair in the living room, whispering to himself, “fuck fuck fuck.” He rubbed at his eyes, blinked, rubbed them harder.
“Sam?”
He looked up at her, and there was something wrong with his eyes. Something very, very wrong.
“What--” She began. “Sam... Sam holy shit.”
He was looking at her. He was seeing.
“Holy shit, Sam--”
He was looking at her. Looking. His eyes appeared to be horribly strained, red and watery, white mucus gathered in his lashes and tear ducts, and he blinked erratically.
“I dunno what’s wrong,” he said, rubbing again at his forehead. “They hurt. They fucking sting like you wouldn’t believe.”
Seeing his eyes focused-- focused on her-- was like looking at a different person.
She opened and shut her mouth several times. Then she said, “Call Dean.”
***
They sat up for hours. She was speechless. Dean wouldn’t answer his phone. Sam called back and called back and called back and called back until tears were splashing onto the screen of his cell.
On the umpteenth try, his voice was so shaky the voice recognition wouldn’t work.
“Call BROTHER, you piece of shit. CALL BROTHER. BRO-THER.”
He was about to throw it across the room when she caught his arm. “Just dial the number.”
This seemed to make things worse. He sank into his chair and let out a single, defeated sob.
“I... I barely remember how to read, I can’t-- I don’t which is which number is which-- I can’t-- he never ignores my calls. Never.”
“Sam,” she finally said. “Let’s try to sleep. We’ll sleep, we’ll sleep and we’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
“Something’s happened to him.”
“I’m sure he’s fine, Sam. Let’s just go to bed. Please.”
It seemed ridiculous, going to bed with her suddenly-sighted boyfriend, but nothing made sense, there was nothing tethering her to reality anymore and she just wanted to curl up and bury her face in his chest.
“It’s too much.” Sam let the phone fall to the floor between his legs. “Too much.”
“What’s too much?”
He looked at her. By now the mucus from his eyes had dried and crusted over above his cheeks.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
She had to laugh. What else was she going to do? “God, you’re not. Come to bed.”
She washed the crap out of his eyes with a damp rag, but it came back quickly, white sludge bubbling out of his tear ducts.
“Maybe you need a hospital,” she said numbly.
“No hospital,” he said. “No hospital.”
You’d think a blind man who could suddenly see would want to look at everything he could, but Sam stretched out on his back and kept his eyes closed, cracking an lid every so often to squint at the ceiling.
“Can I touch you?” He said after a while. She gave him her hand. He ran his thumb over each knuckle, over and over again. His touch was different. It felt different. She couldn’t describe why.
“It’s still me, Jess,” he said, and repeated it over and over. “It’s still me, okay? It’s still me.”
“Shut up,” she finally begged, crying. She flung the rag over the side of the bed. “Fuck, just shut up.”
***
Their apartment had old beveled windowpanes, and when the sunlight shone through them dozens of mini-rainbows would dance across the hardwood floors. She found Sam sitting on the floor the next morning, poking at one of the rainbows with a trembling hand. The dog slept at his knee.
“Sam?”
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she said. “Did Dean...?”
“No.”
Jess nodded. Stood there awkwardly.
“When I woke up this morning,” Sam said, “I wanted a fucking Caramel Macchiato so bad. The kind my brother makes fun of me for drinking? The biggest one I could find. But then I thought, what the fuck am I gonna do, cross my eyes and pretend to be blind? I mean how do I explain this to anyone?”
Jess sat on the floor in front of him, in front of her own rainbow. She let it shine on her palm, as if she were holding it. “We need to get you to a doctor. A doctor will explain it. This is something to be happy about, Sam. This is a miracle.”
Sam tensed at this. Something in him seemed to pause. He stared at the rainbow on the floor, his eyes dripping.
“No,” he said, “This is no miracle.”
“Sam--”
“Before I was just a blind kid doing the best I could. I didn’t have to do what I was brought up to do. Someone did this on purpose. And I’m a hunter again.”
“A what?”
“A hunter,” he repeated, and hunched over and rubbed at his sore eyes. “Dean wouldn’t ignore my calls unless he was dead. Or seriously hurt.”
“That’s ridiculous, Sam. Maybe he didn’t pay his bill or something.”
“He’s dead or he’s hurt.”
She stood up and looked down at his bowed head for a long time. He idly scratched the dog’s ears. Every now and then moisture seeped from his sore-looking eyes and dripped down his face, almost like tears but not quite.
“I don’t understand this, Sam. I really don’t.”
But she understood enough, because it was radiating from him in waves that seemed to physically bend the air around him.
“You’re leaving,” she said.
Sam nodded. He stood and went to her. He took both her hands and closed his eyes. “Like sandpaper,” he said. “Don’t ever change, Jessica, okay?”
She laughed a little, wishing she could promise such a thing. “Take care of yourself, Sam.”
He nodded. He opened his eyes and looked her. The soreness, the redness was rapidly disappearing now, the snotty build up, and they looked like Sam’s eyes, only they weren’t directionless anymore. They looked off east into the horizon.
“I’d cut them both out,” Sam said, “Both my eyes. If it meant I could stay here with you. If it were that simple. If my brother didn’t need--”
“Go,” Jess said. “You have to go.”
He packed a single knapsack, and he left. The dog stayed close to Sam as he had been trained to do, free of the harness but still dutifully performing his job.
Jess shut the door behind them. She felt a hole in herself where Sam used to be, but she didn’t cry, didn’t mourn, didn't grieve. He was always temporary, always a gift. He didn’t leave but simply slid away, a fading rainbow, vanished like a dream.
:::
The end.