Author: M.Marinov
Rating: PG-13 for language, violence (Dean Whumpage style), and sensitive themes.
Category: Gen. Multi-chap.
Warnings: Some of the bad guys don't play nice.
Spoilers: The season through 'Dead Man's Blood' just to be safe, but nothing explicit.
Disclaimer: I lay claim to nothing. Not my universe, I just play in it.
A/N: A huge thank you to Chini for an awesome beta job! It's amazing the things those guys pick up ;) A heaping of gratitude. Reviews are alwaysappreciated!

Summary: Murders at a college campus lead the brothers on a ghost hunt where Dean seems likely to become the next victim.

Lessons: Chapter One

Sam felt like his head was about to explode. The pounding grew stronger every time he blinked, moved or even talked. It had started off as a dull throb, but was growing steadily with every passing moment.

"I'm bored."

And his brother wasn't helping.

"You like scamming people out of their money. Go play some pool." Scanning the store windows and telephone poles for missing person alerts as they walked, Sam tried to take his mind off the way his vision was swimming at the edges.

"Nah, they kicked me out last night. Something about lying and cheating and my smug face. How much you wanna bet they meant my ravishingly handsome face?"

Sam only resisted rolling his eyes because the wince would have alerted Dean to the small battalion waging war in his head. "Go back to the motel and take a nap, then."

"Dude, do I look two?"

"And do I look like your babysitter? Read a book."

"You're the Geek Boy."

"Hide behind some bushes and scare some kids."

"Now you're not even trying."

Sam jarred to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to face his brother. He was getting more annoyed as the day wore on, and it was barely noon. "Find our next case, then," he said tersely. "Hit on some poor waitress, write the next Broadway hit, I don't care, Dean; but if you say you're bored one more time, I'm going to kill you."

Dean's brow furrowed with a frown that dissolved quickly into a grin.

Clenching his jaw, Sam strode away before Dean could call his bluff.

"What? I wasn't gonna say it." Dean caught up with Sam and sighed. "Man, this town is Boringsville, USA. Their bars close at eleven. Eleven, Sam. Not eleven AM, after a night of chicks and booze. Eleven PM, before the AM!"

"Stop saying eleven." Sam stuffed his hands in his pockets against the day's chill as Dean restlessly strode forward. Sam closed his eyes for a second, giving in to the weight pressing against them. Spots of red and flashes of light wove through the curtain of black that descended along with his eyelids. It was almost like an image trying to take form.

"Dude, there's no job for us here," Dean said. Sam forced his eyes back open as Dean strode up to the nearest telephone pole. He was still seeing those dancing red dots.

"Missing dog. Ten dollar reward." Dean yanked a poster from the pole and slapped the page in disgust. Shoving it under Sam's nose, he asked, "Finding Fido look interesting to you, Sammy? Or can we just hit the road already."

Sam snatched the page from Dean's hands, smoothed it out and stuck it back on the pole. "One night won't hurt."

"Is it Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, or something?"

"What's so bad about that?"

"Rekindling your love with Geek TV? I just got you de-toxed, Dude. If you need a fix, let me talk you through it with some Blue Oyster Cult. "

"No, Dean, wanting to spend one night in an actual bed, with sheets and a pillow."

"What's wrong with my car?"

Sam sighed and forced himself forward. How could Dean stand spending day after day on the road, without real food or a proper bed, always looking for a hunt? Wasn't he tired? Sam sure as hell was.

"Wait," Dean jogged to catch up. "Okay, fine, we'll spend a few days in The Middle of Nowhere. I'll even buy you a candy apple. Just, dude, stop with the dramatic exits."

Sam glanced at his brother. "Really?"

"About the candy apple? Well, hey, if you really want one."

Sam snorted, trying to keep the smile from his lips. "About staying for a while."

Dean shrugged. "Sure. Who knows? If we're lucky, we might run into a zombie."

A wailing shriek screamed through Sam's head as an ambulance careened past and turned a corner. The siren clanged around inside his skull, colliding with and intensifying his headache to the point where it almost seemed sane to pull a Van Gough by chopping off his own ears

"Guess you're not going to be bored for much longer," Sam said, trying to keep his voice steady.

This was almost a second skin for him, this guise of normality. He'd spent four years in college perfecting the act, learning to push away what intruded on the life he wanted until, without really noticing, that habit became instinctual.

"No way. My Dallas Cowboy cheerleader wishes don't come true, but the gods are listening when I say I'm bored?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes, Dean, because the world revolves around you."

"Well, I always thought so."

Sam felt his lips form a smirk and felt his hand reach out to lightly whack Dean's arm. "C'mon," he heard himself scoff, and started for the street where the ambulance had turned. He felt himself act normal though his head was screaming that something was wrong.

---

People were scattered across a large, freshly cut lawn, craning their necks to see around uniformed cops setting up sawhorses to block off the crowd. Old buildings lined the sidewalk. Some were peppered with monuments and all were flanked by neat hedges and gardens. Whispers traveled through the crowd like snatches of gossip and curiosity caught in the breeze.

"Isn't this the local college?" Dean asked.

"Yeah." Sam rubbed his forehead, pain spreading through him until his whole body was engulfed by it.

"Sam?"

Blinking through the red and blue dots dancing through his vision, Sam and saw Dean coming back.

I'm fine," Sam said pre-emotively, shaking his head to clear the dots but only managing to make it worse.

Dean peered at Sam's face. "You look like you're about to puke."

"Well, I'm not, your shoes are safe," he tried to joke before squeezing past Dean and into the crowd. He didn't mean to brush his brother off, but he didn't want Dean worrying. It was just a headache. It had to be. No vision had ever begun like this before.

Sam reached the front of the crowd where paramedics and cops were trying to hide the worst of it as a crime scene photographer snapped pictures. On the pavement in front of one of the buildings, a young girl – most likely a college student -- lay in a pool of her own blood. She had a tattoo of a spearhead on the small of her back, peeking out from the gap between her shirt and jeans.

"I'm not worried about my shoes," Dean muttered, appearing beside Sam in that silent way he had of showing up before you realized he was there. "Though they are nice," he added almost as an afterthought. Then, as if only now noticing the body at his feet, he said, "Definitely up there on my lists of things I didn't need to see this soon after breakfast."

"Tell me about it."

"Horrible isn't it?" chimed in an older woman standing beside them. She tightened her cardigan and visibly shivered. "The pressure these schools put on young people."

"It was suicide?" Dean asked.

The woman nodded. "Third one in as many months. The government needs to do something."

"Clean up crews?" Dean muttered.

Sam poked Dean in the back. Dean pushed him away and turned back to the woman. "Are you sure it was suicide? No one heard a scream or a struggle? She didn't hit head first, did she?"

The woman turned to give him ad odd expression.

Sam grabbed Dean's arm. "He's a CSI fan," he explained, forcing a smile before pulling Dean to the edge of the crowd.

"Yeah that blonde chick is hot," Dean grinned at her before turning to Sam and yanking his arm free. "Dude, hands."

"Dude, brain. You can't ask people things like that."

"Why?"

Sam stared at Dean for a second. "Because…you just can't. Normal people don't ask things like that."

Dean snorted. "Yeah. Normal. That's what I want to be. Good argument."

Sam sighed. "Think we should check it out?"

"Why? She took a nose dive and…" Dean's voice trailed off, distracted by a movement in one of the building's windows.

Frowning, Sam followed Dean's gaze. The windows were full of students trying to see what had happened, but that was to be expected. "Dean?"

Dean blinked. "Huh?" He stared at Sam's face blankly for a second; then, shaking off the grog of his stun, he asked, "Dude, did you see that?"

"What?" Sam looked up again but saw nothing unusual.

"The girl."

"Which girl?"

"In the window. All Japanese horror film like. Creepy as hell."

Sam frowned, scanning building's windows. "Maybe she's an art student?"

"Funny." He slapped Sam's arm and pointed. "There!"

Sam looked where Dean was pointing. He still saw nothing but curious students. He let his gaze travel the windows slowly, lingering over every face. There. A flicker. Black eyes. He blinked and she disappeared.

He started to say something, but then she re-appeared in another window. She looked cold and still, pale as porcelain with eyes so dark and deep they looked black. Her eyes swiveled his direction the instant he looked her way. She cocked her head and reached out to press her fingers against the glass. Her lips moved. Frowning, Sam tried to focus on them, to work out what she was saying, but he couldn't pull his focus from her eyes. They seemed to be getting darker, and even though neither of them was moving, the space between them lessened until he was sure he could feel her breath on his face. The sound of the crowd on the lawn dulled until all he could hear was his own heart beating and his own breath passing his lips. The world around him faded until all he could see were those eyes, until all he could feel was the pounding in his head. The pain intensified, spreading through his whole body like a fire. He wanted to cry out and grab his head, but he couldn't move.

He couldn't stop the headache from forming into images for a second longer. The pain in his head exploded.

Like a firecracker, images shot through his mind, bouncing off each other so fast that all he could catch were snippets. Drops of blood hitting a wood floor, tilting blue symbols, a wall of spears, a body falling from a window, a fire, the body hitting the ground, his own voice screaming Dean's name …

Sam gasped as the images fled his mind and left a black void in their wake – black like those endless, black eyes.

His eyes sprang open and he found himself staring at a blue sky, then Dean's worried face. And others, one holding up two fingers and speaking. Sam turned his head to the side and saw legs and shoes, He must have fallen, ended up lying on the grass. He sat up. And almost fell over again.

Dean grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, holding him upright. and,watching him closely. "Hey, Sammy, you okay?"

"Um, yeah." Sam rubbed his temples, still seeing those dark eyes.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" the paramedic asked again. There was half a crowd gathered around him in addition to Dean and the paramedic. Great. He always loved creating undue attention by falling on his ass in the middle of a crowd.

"Two. I'm fine, really." He looked to Dean for help. Dean nodded.

"He doesn't like the sight of blood," Dean told the paramedic, pulling Sam up. "This is nothing; you should see him after a horror flick."

The paramedic didn't look convinced. "People don't usually grab at their heads and gasp at the sight of blood."

Dean looked annoyed at having logic thrown back at him. Sam just felt embarrassed. "Yeah well, he's one of those super-sensitive ones, okay?"

"Dean." Sam turned to the paramedic, smiling in assurance. "Really, thank you, but I'm fine."

The paramedic sighed and shrugged. "Might want to go to campus Health just to be safe."

Dean smiled tightly and pulled Sam away from the crowd, around the corner of one of the buildings. "Hey, what happened?" Dean asked, the smile instantly falling from his face.

"I don't know." Sam shrugged off Dean's arm and turned back to the window. It was empty. "I saw… flashes of…I don't know... Something bad is going to happen here, Dean." He glanced back at the crowd as they parted to let the gurney through as it wheeled away the body. "Something worse." He turned back to look at the building where the girl had stood in the window.

"Wait," Dean said, walking around Sam to stand in front of him and cut off his view of that building, ignoring the fact that Sam's height made his attempt more or less useless. "You had a vision?"

Sam frowned, thinking back to the images that had rushed through his head faster than he could control. "No, they weren't mine…They were hers, I think." He reached up to rub his head, then frowned. "My headache's gone," he said, surprised.

"You had a headache? And why didn't I know about this?"

Sam raised an eyebrow. "I have an itch on my knee, too, did you want to know about that?"

"If that knee had psychic flashes every time it got an itch, yeah I would."

Sam sighed at the concern in Dean's voice. "Look, all I know is I was looking at the girl in the window and I suddenly had these…flashes…and then I'm on the ground staring at your ugly mug."

Dean stared at Sam fir a few seconds, letting him know he didn't buy it. "Ugly what?" Dean slapped Sam's shoulder, letting the topic slide. For now. "Looks like we've got ourselves some ghostbustin' to do."

"Do you really think it's a ghost, as in disembodied spirit? I was thinking more a manifestation or something. Maybe an omen … like a banshee, only more Asian?"

"Beats me. But I'm good with BansheeBusting, too."

Sam smirked. "Could you at least try not to look so happy?"

Dean shrugged. "Beats candy apples and watching Oprah. So, where do you want to go first? The room the chick took the swan dive from or the one the dead chick was in? Your turn to pick. Or do you wanna eenie-meenie-mo it?"

Sam chewed his lip, looking back up at the now-empty window. "The victim's room," he said finally. "If something supernatural made her jump the EMF should pick up the residual energy."

"Jumper's room it is."

---

Dean stamped his feet against the cold night air, though it wasn't long before someone came out of the dorm building. Dean quickly grabbed the door before it could close and ushered Sam inside, hurrying in after him. They'd been forced to wait until nightfall for the police to clear the girl's room and Dean was itching for some action other than Oprah reruns.

Once inside the hallway, Dean pulled out the EMF detector and handed it to Sam, keeping the ITS for himself. The hallway was unnaturally quiet – no sounds were coming from behind any of the doors, and the small space seemed to echo with their footsteps.

Dean kept an eye on each portrait and framed painting that they passed, waiting for one of the characters to flicker into life. Yeah, their past few hunts had taught him to expect anything.

"What exactly did you see?" Dean asked Sam, more to fill the space with another sound besides their footsteps.

Sam looked up, a strange look crossing his face. He shrugged slightly, his eyes returning to the EMF. "I couldn't make them out."

Dean recognized that low, clipped tone. Sam wasn't telling him something. Before he could push the topic, he heard a radio crackling and he quickly shoved Sam behind a corner. A second later, a security officer strode past. Dean watched him round the corner before hurrying for the girl's room.

The room looked normal. Books lay open on the desk, the computer was whirring softly, the bed was rumpled, balled up chocolate bar wrappers sat next to the wastebasket, obviously having missed their target, and Drew Barrymore smiled up at them from the front page of a glossy new magazine half hanging off the night table.

Dean glanced at his ITS. Nothing. "Come out, come out wherever you are…"

Sam started roaming the room, moving the EMF over the walls.

Letting Sam take care of the bedroom, Dean walked back through the common room and into the small bathroom. He flipped the switch and fluorescent lights flickered on. Dean opened the cabinet and started searching through it for any tell-tale medication. Finding nothing more interesting than Cinnamon flavored toothpaste, he sighed and closed the cabinet, revealing in its mirror a set of dark eyes. Dean whipped around and pulled his gun from his waistband. The room was empty. He glanced back at the mirror, but it only reflected his face, and paler than he'd like it to be. Annoyed for being spooked, Dean cocked his gun and let his eyes slide towards the shower curtain. He tore it open, finding nothing but gleaming tiles.

"You're a tease, huh?" he muttered. The lights flickered and he felt cold breath on his neck. He turned and found himself face to face with that pale girl from the window.

"Boo," she whispered before vanishing, leaving behind a giggle that bounced off the walls before fading away.

Dean waited for a second with his gun raised. When she didn't reappear, he risked a glance down at his ITS. It read nothing.

Dean reentered the bedroom, tucking his gun back into his waistband.

Sam looked up, a handful of underwear clutched in his hand from the drawer he'd been rummaging through. "This really isn't…" he said, a flush painting his cheeks. "I was looking for a diary or something."

"Whatever, dude. I don't care whose panties you poke through. She's here."

"What happened?"

"I just had a close encounter of the dead emo kind."

Sam glanced down at his EMF. "It's not reading any activity."

"Mine either," Dean said, shoving the thing back into his backpack. "Useless piece of crap."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"I know; I made this damn thing."

Sam rolled his eyes. "No, Dean. I mean this thing must not be giving off any electromagnetic energy."

"That's impossible," he sat down and twirled himself towards the humming computer, moving the mouse so that the screensaver disappeared. "All dead nasties give off a vibe."

"Yeah, you're right, Dean. She's obviously just a magician who can, you know, disappear with a click of her fingers. Nothing unusual about that."

"Or maybe the detector's just broken, dumbass."

"Both of them?"

"Hate to break it to ya, Sammy boy, but stranger things have happened."

Sam knew Dean considered himself more or less an expert in all things ghostly – he knew the game, he knew the rules and the players, and he didn't like it when those things started to mix up. To him it wasn't the supernatural that was dangerous, it was change. So Sam let the argument slide and walked up to the computer. "Find anything?"

"No suicide note that I can see. Looks like she was writing an essay." Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam. "Would you spend your last hours writing an essay?"

Sam thought about it.

"Oh god, you would, wouldn't you?"

"What? No. I wasn't thinking about that. Did the ghost say anything?"

"Boo."

"What?"

"She said boo. And giggled." Dean shrugged. "Hey, I'm not the crazy one."

A thump sounded in the other bedroom. Dean stood beside Sam and they both tightened their grips on their guns and began creeping towards the door, but then another sound, like rattling coat hangers, emitted from the closet.

"Gee, you think it's trying to separate us?" Dean looked from the closet to the other room. "You take the room, I'll take the miniskirts."

Sam nodded. "Be careful."

"Of the coat hangers?" Dean smirked. "You're right, they could jab me in the eye."

Sam sighed. "Or there could be a closet monster ready to spring out and gouge out your eyes." He walked out before Dean had a chance to reply.

"Everyone's a comedian," Dean muttered. He walked over to the closet and grabbed the handle, but hesitated. Swearing silently at Sam, Dean stepped to the side, away from the immediate line of fire, then jerked the closet door open. It hit the wall with a thud and bounced off it, swaying and creaking. He waited for a second, stepping forward cautiously when nothing tried to attack him, coat hanger or otherwise. He roughly pushed aside the clothes and kicked at the shoes but found nothing.

Then he froze, feeling that cold breath on his neck again. He stood still, fingers tightening on the gun, feeling the breaths hit his skin like bursts of cold wind. He slowly turned around, expecting her to disappear the second he did and reappear behind him, where he planned to whip around and shoot a round into her, but he continued to feel the cold breaths until he found himself face to face with her pasty complexion. He took a step backwards and tried to raise his gun. But his movements were slow, too slow, like he was stuck underwater, or in a thick fog that was wrapping itself around his arms and legs and floating in front of his vision, disorientating him. Pull the trigger, his mind shouted. Pull it! But his fingers wouldn't work. It was like he'd forgotten how to use them.

Her lips moved and a voice floated from them, carried to him like on a breeze. I know what you did…

---

Sam lifted up the blanket to check under the bed. No dirty magazines, no hidden love letters, no supernatural entity. Sighing, he pulled himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. A ghost with no energy, and a noise with no owner. So much for the Shark Week.

There was a muffled noise from the other room, like something falling to the floor, then the door between them slammed shut. "Dean!" Sam jumped up, running for the other bedroom, his stomach dropping.

He flung the door open. Something flickered, then vanished. Dean was standing near an open window, looking dazed and confused.

"Dean?" Sam ventured.

Dean turned his head. He stared at Sam like he'd just noticed him standing there, then frowned, looking around the room until he found his gun, lying in the open doorway of the closet. He gestured vaguely, asking, "What's that doing all the way over there?"

Sam looked from the gun to Dean. "What happened?"

Dean shook his head. "I don't know. That ghost appeared and I…I guess I went in some sort of trance. I sure as hell don't remember dropping my gun. Or, you know, walking halfway across the room." He scratched his head and turned to look at the window behind him. "At least I didn't end up butt naked in the middle of the quad, huh?"

Sam started to answer, but the door opened, and a girl carrying a large cardboard box walked in. She stopped short when she saw them. She frowned, her eyes red and puffy. "I didn't know anyone was in here. Sorry."

She started to back out but Sam quickly stepped forward. "No, it's fine, we were just leaving."

She nodded absently, walked in, and put the box down on the bed.

"Uh, actually … we're from the school paper. Do you think we could -" Sam glanced over at Dean only to find him leaning against the windowsill, staring out with a frown. "Um, do you think I could ask you some questions?"

The girl nodded, sitting on the bed and picking up the magazine before it fell off the bedside table. Sam grabbed the computer chair and pulled it forward, sitting across from her. "You knew…uh…?"

"Sherrie. Sherrie Cruiser. Yeah I did. I'm Claire, one of her roommates. I just came to grab some stuff – to send to her family, you know…" She started fiddling with the magazine, flipping through it and breathing deeply. She looked up and smiled tightly. "Sorry."

"No, it's fine. This must be hard for you. Was Sherrie, um…did she ever say anything about -"

"Was she suicidal, you mean? No. Never. That's what's so weird. She said those people who killed themselves were fucking retards."

Sam was taken aback. Even Dean turned, one eyebrow raised.

"Wow, that sounded bad, didn't it?"

Yeah," Dean said, walking away from the window.

"No," Sam corrected, resisting the urge to glare at his brother.

"It's just…Sherrie's really competitive, and those three others that, you know, jumped, were her biggest competition. They were at each other like cats and dogs." Claire paused to scratch absently at her jeans.

"So she killed them?"

"Dean!"

"What? She said they were enemies."

"No, no, I'm making her sound bad." Claire took a deep breath and continued. "She liked the competition. It gave her a rush, you know? She was disappointed that they opted for the easy way out, I guess. So…yeah, I don't know why she would do it herself. It doesn't make sense."

"Was she acting differently today?"

Claire thought about it for a second before shaking her head. "No –Oh, wait, yeah. I saw her briefly on her way back from her morning class. She was acting out of it. Dazed. I just thought class was really boring or something."

Sam shot Dean what he hoped was a discrete warning not to joke about being bored to death. "Okay, thank you for your time and we're really sorry for your loss." Sam stood up and pushed the chair back in front of the computer, following Dean to the door.

Dean turned back around. "That tat, on her back…it looked new, were you with her when she got it?"

"Sherrie doesn't have a tattoo. She thought they were stupid too."

"My mistake." Dean exchanged a look with Sam before smiling politely and shutting the bedroom door, leaving Claire to sort through Sherrie's things.

Sam sighed as they walked down the stairs and rubbed his eyes again. He was tired; the headache from that morning had left him lightheaded. A cold breeze hit his neck. He turned but found nothing but an empty stairwell. Shrugging his coat closer, Sam followed Dean, letting his mind travel back to those images that the girl had shown him – the blood, the falling body, the sound of his own voice calling Dean's name. From somewhere in those flashing images, or maybe from the walls of the hall itself, a whisper crept into his mind.

Tomorrow dead will come to stay…