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"So." Dean leans on the counter with both hands, letting his jacket fall open so his Glock is clearly visible. "Good witch, or bad witch? Talk fast and be convincing, 'cause I only recently came around to the idea there might be two kinds."
It's the fourth new-age-y goths-gone-wild magic supply store he's tried, and the only one with somebody above the legal drinking age behind the register. She's north of thirty, smile lines around her eyes and gray hairs around her temples. Dean has a good feeling about her, but he keeps his guard up. His instincts have, on occasion, failed to stick the landing.
She leans on the other side of the counter, mirroring Dean’s position. Her own jacket falls open to reveal a set of hex bags hanging off the leather workman’s belt around her waist. She smiles, showing no fear whatsoever. "Are you asking about my skill level, or my philosophical inclinations?"
"That only matters if one of those questions gets a different answer."
"What about you? Good hunter, or bad hunter?"
"Oh, I’m very good."
The witch narrows her eyes. "Are you talking about your skill level, or—"
Dean pushes off the counter. "I need a truth spell. Potion, charm, whatever. I just want to know who I'm dealing with, okay?"
She pushes back, too. The dangerous slant to her mouth becomes all business, and she sticks out her hand. "Maya Kenazi," she says. "Decent, until provoked."
Dean takes her hand like he's taking a dare. "Dean Winchester. Likewise."
Her eyes go wide, but she pumps his hand like a truck driver. "If half the things I've heard about you are true, I guess you are pretty good. What do the mighty Winchesters need a truth spell for?"
"That's classified, ma'am."
"Hey. I need to know you're not running off to truth-whammy some poor unsuspecting schmuck. I run with a 'harm none' kind of crowd."
"Then we're good," Dean says, pulling out his wallet. "The whammy is for me."
It's a little silver starfish-looking thing. It takes her an hour to mold, cool, and curse the silver, and ten minutes to pick the perfect leather cord to string it on. When Dean ties it around his neck, he doesn't feel any different.
"I don't feel any different," he says, "and you're really pretty, but not my type." He blinks. "Whoa, that's freaky."
"You can choose not to say something," Maya says. "But it won't let you lie. Anything you say while you wear it will be the truth as you perceive it."
"Got it."
"So, what is your type?"
He shuts his teeth around all the words trying to get out; it isn't hard, but it does take an effort. Once he's sure he has it all penned in, he opens his mouth and says, "Tall."
Maya grins. "I guess we're just not meant to be."
"Nope," he says, experimenting. "My dance card's full. But it would have been a pleasure."
He finds Sam where he left him: camped out in bed, blanket tucked around his waist, laptop balanced on a breakfast tray over his thighs. He runs hot and cold these days, literally, and he's traded in his hoodie for a black t-shirt faded down to iron gray. It's an honest t-shirt, keeping exactly zero secrets, and Dean has to force himself not to notice. At least, not to notice out loud.
"Dude, you look awesome," he says, and clenches his teeth before he can say anything more incriminating on that topic. This is an unforeseen problem -- the curse doesn't differentiate between the good kind of truth and the kind that can get you bro-zoned. He braces himself and says, "How you feeling?"
"Not awesome." Sam makes a face last seen on a chubby five-year-old and says, "Make me a sandwich?"
For the past week, Dean has suspected Sam of milking this whole purity sickness thing far past its expiration date. But he makes the damn sandwich, because when Sam looks at him like that, there's no end to the kind of destructively true nonsense Dean's likely to say. Sam makes it disappear in thirty seconds, then licks the mayo off his fingers with a slow thoroughness Dean can't look away from.
Sam -- world's foremost Dean Winchester scholar -- turns sharp eyes on his brother and says, "How are you feeling?"
Dean's mouth is too dry to answer right away; that's what saves him. He stares at the bed post next to Sam's head and says, "I feel like we should talk."
"Well, sit down." Sam pats the bed next to his thigh. "You're making my neck hurt."
Dean snorts. "Welcome to my life." He sits down, propping one leg up next to Sam's and leaving an inch of space for Jesus.
Sam sets his laptop aside and looks at Dean. He keeps looking at Dean long past the time when Dean should have said something, and when Dean continues not to say anything at all, Sam says, "Are we talking today, or...?"
Dean's fingers dig into the blanket. He should have tried this in the library, while Sam was a little more dressed and a little less in his right mind. But he's here now, and Sam's here, and he needs to get some shit straight before hell and heaven start raining down on them again.
"Back at the church. You said some things."
Color floods into Sam's cheeks. "Dean--"
Dean rubs his fingers over the cool silver charm, for luck and courage. "You were wrong about a lot of the stuff you said there."
Sam nods. "You already said--"
"I'm not saying I didn't do my best to make you think that way. That's on me." Dean takes a steadying breath and exhales another batch of truth. "But I get scared when I'm not in charge, Sam. I'm kind of a control freak. In case you hadn't noticed."
Sam lets out a shaky laugh. "You're not exactly a cypher, Dean."
"Hey, I got secrets!"
"You think you've got secrets," Sam says, halfway smiling.
"Well, some of them I keep a little too well, apparently."
"So, tell me one."
Dean sees that one coming, and bites his tongue until the urge to spill his guts fades to a manageable hum at the back of his throat. "Seems like you didn't know I trust you more than anybody in the world," he says, and then a wave of honesty crashes against the back of his teeth and he spits out, "uh, except for me."
"Dude," Sam says.
"Control freak here. We established that."
Sam nods. "I get that."
"Do you? All of it? Because," Dean says, all in a rush, "there's nobody else I'd want to do this with. There's nobody I'd rather have at my back. If it's seemed different... I'm sorrier than I can ever say." He looks up, makes himself look Sam in the eye. "But it's never been that way, Sammy. Not ever."
"Dean, you said all this before. Back at the church--"
"Yeah, I know. But it feels like you've been thinking like that for a long time, and maybe you need to hear the truth more than once. You're my brother," Dean says, and that's always meant more than it should. "There's nothing more important to me. I'm just shitty at saying it when one of us isn't dying."
All the color drains out of Sam's face. "Which one of us is dying now?"
"Hey, no." Dean grabs at Sam's hand, the one his purified blood ran out of, the one Dean sealed up with nothing but hope and a filthy bandana. "We're fine. We're both going to be one hundred percent okay, Sam. I promise." He laughs under his breath and twists the silver starfish between his fingers. He didn't even know he believed that until he said it.
Sam's eyes track the movement; his focus drops down to the cord around Dean's throat. "What is that?" he asks sharply, leaning in for a better look.
Dean doesn't have a chance to steel himself. "Truth charm," he says, then, "Fuck," and then his face goes hot under Sam's disbelieving stare. "Bought it from a witch. I didn't trust myself to say things right, or not to chicken out." He tries to keep his mouth shut, but as much as he wants to keep quiet, he also wants to say, "You don't know how much I need you, Sammy. I don't think I could get out of bed in the morning without your stupid face to look forward to. I don't think I could keep breathing without you, and it's fucked up that you don't know it. It's not fair to you." Dean gasps for air, his eyes wide with panic, "I fucked everything up, and you--"
Sam wraps one hand around the charm and clamps the other over Dean's mouth, stopping the flood of things Dean's never said to anybody but himself. He watches, waiting until Dean nods that it's safe before he lets go.
He stares at the charm for a long minute, then lifts the cord up over Dean's head. "You needed this?" he says, holding it up between them. "To say all that?"
"I don't always do so well with the home truths." Dean shrugs, not sure what else to say now that he can say whatever he wants. He rubs at his neck, missing the weight of the curse against his skin, against his tongue. "Maybe all that was a little too honest," he says. "But what the hell, right? Communication isn't my best subject, I figured maybe I could use a remedial class."
"You could try not saying stupid shit you don't mean, for a start."
"Yeah, well, I meant everything I said just now." Dean looks at Sam, trying to beam his sincerity across the short distance between them with nothing but the questionable force of his will.
"I would have believed you without this. But what the hell, right?" Sam shakes his head. He slips the leather cord over his own head, and his eyes lock onto Dean's. "Let's talk."
"Oh, hell no," Dean says, jerking back. Telling Sam the truth is one thing, but hearing the truth is a whole different ballgame.
Sam grabs his shoulder in a grip like iron, and there's no way Dean can break free of it without engaging in actual violence against his brother. "No way," Sam says, "you had your turn. Now I get mine."
"This is a very bad idea. Epic bad. Just stop and think about this, Sam--"
"I've thought about it," Sam says, "I'm done." He tilts his head to one side, his focus turning inward. "Huh. So that's how it works...?"
Dean's shoulders slump. "Be careful," he mutters. "It gets away from you."
"It's not brain surgery, Dean. It's ... wow." He starts to smile. "This is amazing. I want to tell you so many things right now."
"Awesome," Dean says drily.
"Hey. Fair's fair. I had to listen to you."
"I had nice things to say."
"You think I don't?" Sam stares into Dean's face like it's the world's best TV show. "You seriously think I don't!" He gives Dean's shoulder a hard shake. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"You haven't made much of a secret of how bad you want to get away from me," Dean says in a low voice. The words are hard, but he drags them out anyway. Maybe he's not wearing the charm anymore, but that doesn't mean Sam's got exclusive access to the truth. "You've been running away from me since you were a kid, Sam. Sorry if I'm not exactly dying to hear your reasons."
"I've worshipped you since I was a little kid, Dean," Sam says. "There's no place I've ever wanted to go that I didn't want to bring you with me."
Dean's eyes snap up, wide with surprise.
"Everything you've said since you walked into this room, I could say right back." Sam pauses, looking inward again. "I'm pretty sure there isn't any true thing you could say to me that I couldn't say right back."
Rattled, Dean searches for something to say. Something smart, something to take the edge off his jangling nerves. But there's nothing in him but a mute bubble of desperate hope, pushed up by an equally desperate swell of fear. He fists his hand in the blanket, and his heart hammers under his ribs.
Sam slides his foot up on the bed and rests his arm over his bent knee. The back of his hand grazes Dean's cheek, slow and deliberate. Dean stops breathing altogether, and Sam, the smug son of a bitch --
Sam laughs, his eyes and his fingers shifting to Dean's mouth. He traces the curves of Dean's lips, and Dean sucks in a single gasping breath. Sam's thumb follows it, catching on Dean's teeth and opening him up for Sam's mouth.
It's been coming since Sam laughed down at him from a bridge outside Jericho, California. It takes Dean completely by surprise. But it's the best kind of shock, electric, like the taste of the air under a long roll of thunder. He turns into it, grabs at Sam's shirt just as Sam drags him in. He ends up draped halfway across Sam's lap while Sam's teeth pull at his lower lip. A groan rises between them and Dean doesn't know or care who it came from. He just knows it's a brand new sound he wants to get better acquainted with.
When he pulls back to catch his breath, Sam doesn't let go. His mouth slides down Dean's jaw, down the stretch of his throat, and by the time Dean's ready to get involved again, Sam's tongue is doing something amazing just below his ear. Dean's thoughts scatter and dissolve in static, and that's fine, totally fine, because Sam's saying something over and over, and maybe Dean should listen.
"--ever," is all he catches. Dean pulls away -- not far, hopefully not for long -- and says, "What?"
"I'm never leaving you," Sam says. Dean can feel each word whisper across his skin. "Not ever, Dean. I don't want to. I never did."
"Sam," Dean says. It's just one word, but it means the same thing it always has. He slides his hand under the cord around Sam's throat and feels the curse take hold again. "Sam."
Sam nods, his eyes bright and wet, and pulls Dean back in. "Yeah," he says against Dean's mouth. "I know."
.end