Title: bells don't ring by themselves
Summary: Dean Winchester starts seeing things
Rating: PG
Notes: Assumes you've seen season 5, nothing from season 6 though :)
Disclaimer: Borrowing Kripke's character for a moment...
Word count: 332
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It's not a new thing
It's not—after you've been hunting for a while, you're bound to get a feel for these things, a sixth sense if you will. Like knowing when the next fugly will come tumbling along, their feeding place, their favorite prey, where the bones are buried. Things like that, nothing special.
So he doesn't mention that sometimes he can see the footsteps where a ghost has tread on its spectral feet, the hell hounds and their will-o-wisp eyes, especially when Crowley brings his over to say hello. He doesn't tell Sam that he can see through the bags of flesh and meat and he almost pukes because wow, that is sick, but he's spent near half a century beneath Alastair's tutelage and there isn't much to incite his gag reflex these days.
He doesn't tell anyone that the reapers look solid enough to be real people.
There are good things too; he can spot a demon in a sea of faces without saying 'Christo' or a spray of holy water. He can see Annael's rosen glass wings, imbued with a fiery glow. Raphael's, echoing wrath and justice. Castiel's charcoal grey pair, guarded and ruffled like scolding hens perched across his back. He can see the ashen feathers the angel leaves behind on their beds, the backseat and in their bags like protection and is strangely comforted though he never confronts the other about it.
He never mentions how it hurt to see his father and the Archangel Michael inside, barely contained, his brilliance threatening to burst forth from the paper-thin skin like it is nothing. He doesn't say that Lucifer is beautiful, powerful and righteous inside Sam. The Morning Star risen at last looking like every tale of angels that his mother told him before she passed.
And after the mélange of sounds, sight, taste, smell and feelings, he ignores how quiet Lisa's house is, its suburban untouched by the supernatural.
And that's the way it should be.