A/N: As always my profound thanks to Merisha and Scotia for invaluable beta work. All remaining errors are mine.

When Dean opened his eyes, he was face down in the sand. The wind was howling like a banshee. He lifted his head and spit before dragging himself up on his knees, coughing and hacking sand out of his mouth and throat. Catching the edge of the walkway, he pulled himself upright, and then up onto the wooden slats. He couldn't see much beyond the railings – most of the walkways were buried in drifts of sand. The wail of the wind was making it impossible to think. He pressed his hands over his ears, hard, as he looked around. Sam'd been just there, north of him, and he found himself running, shouting Sam's name, before he even knew he'd started moving.

He couldn't see Sam anywhere, and even if his brother was yelling for help, he couldn't have heard him over the noise of the wind. Sam's footprints were as thoroughly gone as his brother was, and it was getting darker by the second. He turned, thinking to run to the car for a flashlight, when something caught his eye. Sand was moving and a hand burst up and into the air, just like in a hundred horror movies. How fucking cool.

Except it was his brother's hand and, shit, he might be suffocating. He dove forward, falling to his knees and grabbed Sam's hand, hauling on his arm, yelling over the wind to his brother, while madly digging one handedly at the sand still burying him. He cleared Sam's upper back and shoulders and could see Sam's shirt covering his head. Just as Dean grabbed for the fabric, the sand suddenly heaved up and poured off, as Sam brought himself up on his knees, shoulders hunching as he jerked forward, fist to his mouth, coughing and sucking in air.

He yelled, "Sam, Sammy, are you OK?" He couldn't hear himself over the wind but he could feel his voice rumbling in his chest and throat. He got his hands under Sam's shoulders and helped get him on his feet. He started brushing sand out of Sam's hair until Sam pushed his arm away. "Are you OK?"

Sam's mouth was moving, and he put his hands over his ears.

Dean yelled as loudly as he could, hoping Sam could hear him because he sure couldn't hear himself. "We need to get out of this wind! Can you hear me? Are you OK?"

Sam nodded his head vigorously, sand haloing around his head, until another coughing spell bent him over. Dean put an arm over his shoulder. "You aren't OK. Let's get to the car."

Sam pulled up and away from him, then looked right at Dean and put a finger to his lips – he was shushing his big brother?

"What the hell, Sam? You're going to have to yell because I can't hear you."

Sam's eyes narrowed and his mouth moved, but Dean heard nothing over the rush of wind in his ears. He tried to catch Sam's arm again to get him to the car, but Sam waved him off. He hared off to some scrub trees, broke off a branch and held it up, oddly triumphant for a stick, Dean was pretty sure, but he followed Sam as he walked a few feet away and pointed to a smooth stretch of sand. He poked the stick in the sand and started drawing.

Dean thought he should check his brother for a fever. He yelled, "What are you doing? We should get to the car."

Sam pointed again. He'd been writing.

NO WIND

"You can't hear it? That's all I can hear, really loud howling wind." He looked around, and realized the ocean was still, the tufty ocean grass moving in what appeared to be a gentle breeze. He looked back at Sam. "What happened?"

STOP YELLNG

"Yelling?" Sam nodded. Dean concentrated on making his voice softer, which was harder than he thought it would be when he couldn't hear it, just feel it. "You can hear me?" Another nod from Sam. "You don't hear wind?" Sam shook his head. "Oh – crap, it's just me then? But you're OK right? You got out in time?"

Sam nodded again. He turned back to the sand, and started to write.

YS U K?

"Yes … am I OK?" He rubbed his back. "Yeah, feel like I got sunburned. My back hit the walkway, but I'm fine. Except my ears." He pulled off his outer shirt, and positioning himself carefully upwind of Sam, began shaking out the shirt and brushing himself off vigorously. He watched Sam make jazz hands, trying to fend off the sand showering him. Dean looked up innocently at Sam. "What?"

JRK

He held his head over to one side and hit his head, moving it up and down, hard. Then he turned his head the other way. When he straightened, Sam was staring at him. "What now, Einstein?"

Sam wrote: WHT U DN?

"Done?" Affronted, he replied, "I haven't done anything, I was just standing there" pointing in the general direction of the sound, "looking at the beach, minding my own business."

Sam rolled his eyes and spelled out D O I N G? and underlined it a couple of times.

"Oh, I was trying to get the sand out of my ears. Like water." Sam rolled his eyes. "I bet Bobby can't read this stuff when you text him, either. Buy a frickin' vowel."

N E E E D 2 GO

"Don't get testy, smart ass, but yeah, let's go. After all, you might run out of room to write", he said, waving his arm toward yards and yards of unbroken sand. He turned and starting walking back to the car, but had taken only a few dozen steps when he slammed to a halt, and turned around so fast Sam took a few steps backwards. "You go first," he said as he pulled his brother in front of him. "I can't hear you back there."

Shit – that had really freaked him out. He was always aware of Sam on some level, sometimes he thought it was molecular it ran so deep. Dean had no idea how panicky he would feel when he wasn't able to at least hear Sam walking, kicking up sand, breathing, clothes brushing, something…

Sam walked to the driver's side of the Impala and held his hand out, clearly expecting to drive.

"I don't have to be able to hear to drive. I'm fine."

Sam shook his head and clearly snapped his fingers, jiggling the hand up and down.

"You're just as bitchy without words as with them, you know that?" as he dropped the keys in Sam's hand and himself onto the passenger seat.

On the ride to the motel, he experimented, covering and uncovering his ears, humming, even once turning the radio up as high as it would go when Sam was looking the other way at a light. Well, it was a little funny but Sam was pissed off enough to make just one rude gesture at him, and then wouldn't look at him again until he pulled into the motel parking lot.

Sam practically stalked into their cottage, ducking his head to get through the door, and gracefully sidestepping Mrs. Pelham, before Dean had gotten out of the car. She was still standing by the door smiling vaguely as he approached. He sidled by her, muttering "Nice day, isn't it?", never taking his eyes off her hands and ducked inside.

Sam was already on the phone, scanning through the yellow pages. Dean sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. He had an incredible headache – it was just so fucking loud, like standing in front of the speakers at a concert. He started to stand a couple of times, jerking up off the bed, the need to move, to get away from the speakers, so strong it was hard to stay still. If it had been constant, the noise would be bad enough, but the wind pitch was rising and falling, changing from freaky loud to eardrum rupturing.

He watched as Sam closed his phone, and came over to sit next to him on the bed. He pulled out a little notebook and held a pen in his hand.

I CALLD EAR DOC CAN SEE HIM TOMOR WANT GO ER?

Dean shook his head. "This will be gone by tomorrow anyway."

EAT HERE?

Dean nodded, closed his eyes, and involuntarily bent forward, putting his head in his hands again. He felt a vibration in his throat and Sam's hand dropped onto his shoulder, startling him. He realized he must have groaned. This had damn well better be gone in the morning.

He felt the bed move and watched Sam step out the door and return with a duffel a few minutes later. He began warding the room, inscribing sigils in holy water and burnt sage, before salting the door and windows. When he stopped, putting his hands on his hips while surveying the room, Dean said, he hoped quietly, "Kind of shutting the barn door after the horses are out, isn't it? I think it's already inside the room, bro."

Sam grabbed the pad and pen, wrote quickly, and turned the page toward him, shrugging.

SO NTHNG ELS CMS IN.

He picked up the car keys and pointed to the door, pointed at his watch, and did the jazz hand again five or six times.

"Thirty minutes?"

Sam nodded and put his hand on the door.

"The groping granny may still be there. Protect the Winchester, ah, posterior dignity."

Sam grinned and made a show of carefully opening the door and checking left and right before turning back to wave at Dean as he closed the door.

Dean took a couple of Tylenol and lay down on the bed, putting an arm over his eyes. What the fuck was he going to do until this cleared up? He was stuck in a room with a TV he couldn't hear, Dad's journal, and 8 million coupon books for hammocks, discount shoes, wild pony tours and jet skis rentals. Jet skis might be awesome. You got to wear a wet suit. He did his best to relax, but the damn noise was just too loud. He settled for booting up the laptop.

Maybe if he couldn't hear anything, if there was no noise at all, he wouldn't keep expecting to hear something over or under the noise of the wind. He knew rationally that there would be no engine noise, no creaking door opening and closing, no steps by the door, no sound of the key in the lock – he knew that - but when the door did start to open, just as he knew it was going to, his heart still started to race, and he had his Colt in his hand and pointed at the door, even while his brain was screaming 'It's Sam, it's Sam.'

Sam, of course, saw the whole thing, and held still, a little wide eyed. Dean watched his expression change to one of understanding empathy. It was enough to make him sick to his stomach. Sam pulled a chair up to the table and sat next to him, and started writing on the pad of paper.

U OK?

Dean nodded and took a deep breath. He rolled his shoulders and stretched, unaware until then how tight his back and shoulders had been.

After dinner, Sam was right back on the laptop. Hardly able to argue that he could research better than his brother, he pulled up his duffel and rooted around until he pulled up a tattered Stephen King paperback. After thirty minutes of trying, he tossed that on the bed, and headed for the door.

"Going for a walk." As he reached for the door, he realized he could feel the floor vibrating through the soles of his boots. He turned, almost smashing his chin into Sam's shoulder. "Just over to the beach for a few minutes. The room is feeling too small." Sam took a step forward and reached for the handle. "By myself." He watched Sam's face drop. "I can walk without help." He softened the words with a small smile.

It should have been peaceful with the tide coming in. Or going out - he never could remember what it was doing at night or the morning. He tugged off his shoes and socks and walked close to the water, the cool sand squeezing through his toes. He tried to relax, but as soon as he noticed a shell, or caught himself looking up at the stars, the infernal wail in his head would stutter and roar like it knew he'd almost been able to ignore it.

And there were a few times he thought he could hear voices in the wind, or a voice, a voice without words, rising and falling with the wind's pitch and volume, and that was just so creepy it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. And when he could string together coherent thought long enough to think about anything, all he could think about was not being able to hear. What was he going to do? Could he hunt? Anything could sneak up on him, sneak up on Sam for god's sake, come at him when he was sleeping… He spun around, checking the beach, then the ocean ... enough real things snuck up behind him - now he had imaginary things sneaking up on him. Fuck.

He must have spent more time than he knew watching the moon rise over the ocean, because when he glanced back toward the road and the motel, he could see a figure backlit by passing headlights on the Beach road. Even at this distance, he could tell it was Sam: the slightly hunched stance and the hands jammed deep in pockets were status quo since one of Sam's teen growth spurts had put him head and shoulders over everyone in his class, taller than any of his teachers, and even taller than his big brother.

He watched as Sam slid onto the sand and walked out to join him. They stood for a while looking out over the dark ocean, and the moon's clear path of light tracing toward them, until Sam bumped him with his shoulder. He looked over at his brother.

"We'll find this thing. We'll fix it, Sam."

Sam nodded and jerked his chin back toward the road and the motel. Dean shrugged and they walked back side by side.

Sam came awake with a start to the alarm. He turned it off, stretched a little, and almost let the sound of the ocean and his brother's regular breathing lull him right back to sleep. He hadn't had a great night, worry for Dean had kept him awake for hours. He'd gotten up from a drowse at 1 AM having remembered that he hadn't made Dean take his antacids, and found him in front of the TV with the sound off, watching an infomercial.

Dean turned his head. "Have you ever noticed that the closed captioning people can't spell? It's like watching a donkey type."

Sam gave him his pills and went back to bed. He must have gone to sleep just afterwards. It was early, the room still dark, but they would need a good two hours to get to the otolaryngologist in Elizabeth City for their 9 o'clock appointment. He needed to clean up, get Dean in the shower, feed the walking bottomless pit, and get on the road by 7 AM. He rolled over and got his feet on the floor, looking over to Dean's bed automatically, not surprised to see it empty. He swiveled his head and found Dean asleep over the laptop, his head on his left arm, his right arm splayed out across the table.

Sam took a quick shower and dressed. Dean was still asleep when he had finished. Sam stepped forward softly, not wanting to surprise him, propped a note up on the table, and grabbed the keys to the car. He stepped back in fifteen minutes later to find Dean right where he'd left him. Sam stopped for a moment to consider his next step. He opened the curtains to let the rising sun's light flood the room. He checked his brother's bed and found his ever present knife under the pillow. That left the gun Dean had pointed at him last night.

He tried jumping up and down a few times, and opened and slammed the door, with no effect He considered turning on the laptop but that scenario would more than likely end with the same gun pointed at him. He could bring in Mrs. Pelham because she deserved having a gun pointed at her at least once. Finally, he pulled his duffel onto his bed, leaned up against the headboard, and lobbed a pair of socks. Bingo, it bounced off his Dean's right hand and hit his nose. Dean didn't shoot him, although if Sam hadn't waved a large cup of coffee in front of him, the socks might not have made it.

When Dean was clean and dressed, Sam pointed at his watch and then at the door. Dean was up and moving toward the door immediately. Sam grabbed his jacket, and trotted after him. He stopped Dean with a hand on his arm before he got in the car. He was burning up. Sam stepped up to see look into his face. He grabbed his pad and pen.

His brother looked like shit. He even said it out loud, "Dean, you look like shit. Did you sleep at all?" while he wrote.

U LOOK BAD FEVER?

"Headache is all. I took some Tylenol when I was in the bathroom."

"Were you going to tell me?" He gestured with the pad. "The doctor was going to figure it out soon enough."

Dean pointed at the pad. "Use that, Princess."

Sam felt himself blush. Here he was talking to Dean, reminding him he couldn't hear, but damn it, now he was the one trying to communicate with cave drawings while Dean could use complete sentences – if he wanted to.

"Crap, Dean, I'm sorry." He wrote again.

FEVR, HEDACHE, WHT ELSE?

"There's that whole can't hear anything thing."

"Jerk."

Dean grabbed the pad and pen. "I know what that looks like when you say it". He scribbled on the pad then turned it to Sam. Bitch. "Are we going to leave now, Marcel?"