Believing is Seeing
K Hanna Korossy
They were watchingGhostbusters for the umpteenth time in an umpteenth ugly little motel room. Not because they hadn't memorized the dialogue already, but because it was kinda cool to have a movie about what they did, even if it got so much wrong and was labeled "fiction," not to mention "comedy." Although Dean seemed to like that last part, actually. At any rate, after a long day of hunting—what the heck had that thing been anyway, Sam had asked; Dean just shrugged—it was good to kick back and watch someone else take on the paranormal. Beers and microwave popcorn helped, too. Where Dean had found a microwave, Sam didn't want to know. He was just content to be getting more than his share for once, while Dean leaned forward, unusually absorbed in the movie. Or the weird stain on the wall behind the TV, but Sam was being optimistic.
"Hey, Sam," Dean finally spoke up, in that tone that meant he'd probably been thinking more than watching. And considering that was more Sam's weakness than his older brother's, it usually meant he needed to pay attention.
He washed a mouthful of popcorn down with beer to avoid an unsightly spray and probably a punch from Dean. "Yeah?"
"You ever think that maybe all that stuff we deal with, all the supernaturals we come in contact with, lets us see things other people don't?"
It certainly wasn't helping Sam see where that had come from or where it was going. "Okay, was that sentence supposed to make sense? 'Cause you may want to try again."
Dean glanced back at him. "You know. After hanging around ghosts for a while and getting slimed all the time, the Ghostbusters start knowing when the phone's gonna ring, who's calling, stuff like that. What if the supernatural really does kinda rub off on you if you're around it enough?"
Sam frowned, glancing at Dean's hand. Still just the one beer he'd started with. "I don't remember anything like that in the movie."
Dean turned away. Quickly. "Oh, uh. It might have been in the show."
"The show? You mean the Ghostbusters cartoon?" The corners of Sam's mouth turned up. "You watched the cartoon?"
"Hey," Dean wagged a finger back at him. It somehow lacked menace when paired with the red in his face. "That was a good show. The guy who did Babylon 5 wrote some of the episodes."
Sam shook his head to clear it. Yet another trip down the Winchester twilight-zoned rabbit hole. "And…why are we talking about this again?"
An impatient huff. "Look, you said it yourself after we torched old man Murdoch's place, maybe some of this stuff only exists because people believe. Well, maybe some of it we can only see because we know it's there."
Sam was tired of talking to Dean's back, and slid up to the foot of the bed to join him, holding out the popcorn bowl as he did. His brother dug in as if he'd been waiting for the invitation, which, being Dean, he wouldn't have been. But his eyebrow stayed canted at Sam, waiting for a response, and in between the distracting thought that half the time he saw Dean, it was in profile in the car, Sam turned the question over. "You burned the Murdoch place down, not me…and, you mean, if we didn't believe in the things that go bump in the night, maybe they wouldn't go bump?"
Dean leaned back on the bed, still chewing, hands laced behind his head. "I'm not saying that a werewolf wouldn't still eat you for dinner or a poltergeist would put everything back it threw around, but…" Dean nodded. "Yeah, some things. Things other people don't seem to notice even when they're in plain sight. Maybe we do just because we're looking for it, because we've been around it all so long, we can't help but see it."
"Other people." Sam grimaced. "You mean, like, normal people."
Dean fished out his best charming smile. "Not freaks like us." Sam wondered why he bothered, because he knew Sam knew better. Practice for the inevitable blondes and redheads who didn't, maybe.
Sam took a breath, shrugged. "I don't know, maybe. I mean, some things do require belief to exist—golems, snipes, certain elements of voudon…" He shifted his shoulders thoughtfully. "But I don't know if our being around this stuff is what makes us see it. I mean, if it just rubs off like that…" And, wow, he really didn't like the end station of that thought train.
Dean was watching him. "What?"
Sam tried to smile, he really did, to make it seem like a stupid idea. "Maybe that's where my visions come from. I mean, it's not like I had 'em as a kid—maybe it's some kind of…I don't know, bleed-through from what we do."
Dean sat back up, and maybe Sam was imagining it, personal space-conscious as his brother was, but he seemed closer now, knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder. It wasn't only monsters they faced down that way. "No way."
"How can you be so sure?" Sam asked softly.
"Think about it, Sam—I started hunting four years before Dad let you do anything more than stay in the car, then you were at Stanford for over three years—I've been around this stuff way more than you have. If anyone should be picking up," Dean waved a hand, "messages from the future or whatever and throwing around the furniture, it should be me, right?" And how he managed to look cocky and sympathetic at the same time, Sam didn't know. Probably the same way he managed to get women, with a mix of "I wanna jump your bones," and "You can trust me."
Sam stared at him a moment, fragile knots of uncertainty inside him slowly unwinding. He gave Dean a ghost of a smile in return. "Yeah, I guess."
"Besides," Dean cocked his head, "I wasn't even talking about you, dude. Who finds eighty percent of our jobs, huh?"
"Uh, the internet?"
The punch to his arm spilled beer and popcorn and what remained of his melancholy.
"Jerk," he said half-heartedly, picking up a kernel and tossing it at his brother's head.
Dean grinned at him. "I knew you were going to say that."
00000
The pancakes should have given it away.
Dean rarely splurged for a real breakfast, let alone a real breakfast that wasn't fried and eaten from a paper wrapper in the car. For all Sam had fought it alongside the environmentalists in college, however, Styrofoam was now his friend. He licked syrup off the plastic fork and dove back in the carry-out container for more, never wondering what was up Dean's sleeve.
"You know," his brother said suddenly, drawing Sam's attention, "if I could take the nightmares and visions for you, I would."
Then he started eating Sam's hashbrowns.
He gaped at the top of the rumpled blond head—going out for breakfast first thing or not, Dean was not a morning person—but that was apparently all. Belated end to a half-forgotten conversation from the night before, with pancakes thrown in for distraction. Or sweetening. It was hard to tell with Dean sometimes.
"Christo," Sam finally murmured, when he overcame his shock.
Dean didn't even look up. "Shut up and eat your breakfast before I take off without you."
Sam knew his brother loved him. He could see it in everything Dean did.
The End