--

Supernatural things – demons, witches, sprites – had perverse senses of humor. That ought not to have surprised Sam, but it still did.

Spilling your guts. Very funny.

“You sure this is going to work, Sammy?” Dean croaked, face pale in the buzzing fluorescent light of the tiny bathroom. Outside the window it was dark and Sam could hear the sounds of a couple next door going at it. Dean had already commented at length and in detail. “Couldn’t you just prick my finger like Sleeping Beauty? Does it have to be blood from my belly button? Did you feel like this with the Wolf? You gonna fill my belly with rocks? That would be something. Kinda poetic justice or something.”

“Shut up,” Sam muttered under his breath, sorting through their first aid bag for a sterilized scalpel.

“Can’t,” Dean whispered, trying to take a sip of water from a cup. He ended up splashing half of it down his bare chest, still looking warily at Sam’s back. “Wish I could. Listen, this seems like a half-baked ritual. Kinda lame. All it takes is a few bloody sigils on my chest with my own blood? But from my belly button. That’s just…weird. And what if you, I don’t know, nick something important? You could kill me, you know.”

“Don’t give me any ideas,” Sam said, straightening from the bag on the long counter. He’d laid out a dusty spell book, the suture kit and a bunch of gauze and bandages. He didn’t think that Dean would need any stitches, but he wanted to be prepared.

Dean wasn’t so sure. “Fuck! What the hell’s with all the packaging? You planning on gutting me?”

“Just enough to draw blood,” Sam said, annoyed. “It’s your belly button. People get them pierced all the time, don’t be a sissy about it. But why the hell do you think science is just discovering the benefits of umbilical cord blood? Stem cells, they can reproduce themselves any old way they like. Priceless. Magic place, the belly button. Hold still.”

Dean watched as Sam sat down on the toilet bowl cover and gestured for him to face him. “I’ve had more than one woman tell me that it was sexually stimulating when anyone touched their belly button, so maybe you’re right.”

Sam looked up. “You keep up with this and I will gut you.”

Dean tried to look innocent, but that never worked even when he wasn’t cursed. “I once screwed a waitress from Maine who’d had her bellybutton surgically removed. Never thought of it then – she had a bunch of piercings all over the place, was like something out a bad horror movie, played in a band – but maybe she’d had a curse lifted.”

“I’m not taking out your bellybutton, you moron.” It was easier to speak above Dean now that his voice was almost non-existent, a mere scratch, same sound as a rat in the wall. “Just a little blood.”

He consulted the open book, making sure that he had the right set of sigils. Meanwhile, Dean related the last time someone had painted symbols on his body, except somehow that had involved melted chocolate.

“Wonder if I could lick chocolate off someone? Think you could arrange that? Might get something in me that way. I am so hungry,” and that was small, was true, set Sam’s teeth on edge. He hoped like hell this would work.

“You ready?” he asked, breaking across Dean’s list of favorite blue-plate specials, organized by state. Dean nodded as he outlined the relative merits of a vinegar slaw versus a mayonnaise one. His voice didn’t hitch as Sam made a small cut. It bled freely, thank god. First time lucky.

“You almost finished there, Sammy? Because I really can’t stand being operated on. Dad once sewed me up, right here,” and his hand slid down, found an old scar near his hipbone just above his jeans. Sam shoved Dean’s hand away, trying not to think about how deep he’d cut, whether it was too deep or not deep enough. He got to his feet, no longer able to see his incision for the welling blood.

“Or up here, too.” This time to a scar under his ribs, right side. “That one fucking hurt. Oswego Beach, of all places. Can I sit down now?”

“No,” Sam said harshly, because of what he was doing and was trying not to think about. “This counter-spell is specific. You have to be upright and awake.”

Dean had moved on to broxas, whatever the fuck a broxa was, and Sam only partially paid attention: Dean was going on about various weird monsters that Sam had never heard of. Dean had killed a shitload of things. Sam had always known that, but it was terrifying, hearing it listed like this. Cold, a catalog of death and blood.

Sam folded Dean’s fingers down so only his index finger was straight, dipped it in the blood overflowing Dean’s concave navel – and man, he really didn’t have to worry if there was enough blood – and helped Dean copy the sigils from the book onto his chest, three to each pectoral, then a vertical series of small symbols down the path running like a lei line from sternum to circle of blood.

Sam was shaking, knew Dean would feel it, and sure enough Dean started to laugh. “Fuck it, what are you upset about, Sammy? It’s me that’s got a stupid curse. It’s me that’s bleeding from the middle. Hey, are you sure we’ve got this one right? Looks more like a cochlea in the book. Yours looks like that big snail from Doctor Doolittle. The musical, not the one with Eddie Murphy. I liked that musical. And the pushme-pullyou. I always imagined you and Dad like that thing, both pulling away and going round in circles because you two were too fucking stubborn for words.”

Sam turned him around gently, and wordlessly began drawing the necessary sigils on Dean’s back.

“You’re a fucking butcher, Sam.” A low laugh, hoarse. “That’s what I told Jo, too, when she was digging out that bullet you put into me. You know I don’t hold that against you, right? I could see that you didn’t really remember that, but dude, seriously? That’s at least four times you’ve shot me and if I wasn’t such a big-hearted guy I’d be holding it against you. This isn’t working, is it?”

Sam shook his head in frustration. Dean was going on and on, now about how Woody didn’t have a gun in his holster in Toy Story and how weren’t they a little bit like Woody and Buzz, maybe he’d start calling Sam Woody, except that Sam always had a gun and he didn’t think that Woody had ever shot Buzz.

“Sit down,” Sam said loudly.

“Thought I wasn’t supposed to, that it wouldn’t work if I was sitting down.”

“It’s not working,” Sam admitted, sudden tears frustrating his ability to sound calm about any of this. “I don’t know why, but it’s not working. Come on.” Sam dragged him from the bathroom to the bed, pressing a square of gauze against Dean’s belly button, checking for when the bleeding stopped. When it did, he returned to the bathroom for the disinfectant and a bandage while Dean quietly listed all the ballparks he’d visited and which ones he hadn’t.

Sam stood at the bathroom sink for a long moment. He splashed some water on his face, willed down the bile. C’mon, get a grip on yourself. He washed his hands thoroughly, soaked a washcloth to wipe the useless sigils from Dean’s body, then forced himself away from the sink, back into the next room.

Dean took one look at Sam’s face and turned away, throwing the bloody square of gauze to the floor. “Oh, fuck, Sam, stop it. It’s not that bad,” but Dean’s thrashed voice wasn’t pissed off, which somehow made everything worse.

Dean was soon cleaned up, lay prone on the bed, one arm thrown across his eyes. His voice was drifting in and out, sometimes audible, sometimes just a series of small croaks. Sam rummaged in the medical bag, took the sterilized paper and plastic wrapping off a syringe and filled it with sedative, and Dean asked, “What’s that?” suspicious and instantly alert.

“You need to get some sleep, Chatty Cathy. I don’t think you’ll get it any other way. Just a little pin prick.”

Dean sighed, gestured with his hands, mumbling about Mattel talking toys. He held out his arm, though, acquiesced without protest, grimacing as Sam slid the needle out handed Dean another square of gauze.

Dean glared at him, sinking back onto the bed. “Fucking horse doctor. You shoulda been a vet, Sam, with your bedside manner.” But the sedative worked fast and Dean’s eyes drifted shut, a bloom closing up when the sun went down.

Sam settled in with the laptop, anxious. He’d done the ritual correctly, he was sure of it. Even so, even in his sleep, Dean’s mouth still moved, worked. Sam couldn’t make out what he was saying, but every once in awhile a series of words would appear like the message at the bottom of a Magic 8 Ball: Don’t want to; Yessir; Nice girl like you; Hit the mother lode, Pa.

By about three a.m., Sam knew they were in trouble. He had nothing. And Dean kept going even in his sleep, restless, veering from memory to television to baseball and back. And it was always about Dad, somehow, for both of them.

--

“Victor Sun Yen played Hop Sing. He did all their work, goddamn lazy-ass Cartwrights. He died of a gas leak in L.A., penniless, didn’t find his body for three days. Spoke pidgin English around the white guys, but when he was around Chinese guys, he spoke perfect English.”

Sam lifted his head from his arm. His back screamed abuse at him, the laptop almost as deeply asleep as Sam had been. He blinked gummy eyes and registered that the sun was up.

“I’m gonna phone Bobby,” Sam said by way of ‘good morning’.

“Not a bad idea. I don’t think I could hack one more of your curse liftings. And no more of whatever horse tranquilizer you shot into me after you’d drained me of half my blood.” That with a grimace as Dean came to a sit. He reached back and levered himself up with the buffalo horns. “Bolted to the fucking bed as though anyone would steal them. Man.” His voice was stronger, if only because he’d had some sleep, a few hours of unconsciousness.

“You okay? How are you feeling?”

Dean shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Like I just survived a fucking autopsy. Thanks,” fast and heartfelt, but ultimately no comfort at all because he was still talking non-stop, wasn’t he? “But seriously, you come near me with any kind of needle or knife and I’ll scream like a six-year-old girl. Let’s get this done today, okay? Man, I’d kill for a cup of coffee. Think I can get it down?”

Sam was already getting up, grabbing his coat. Pump n’ Ride, here I come.

By the time he returned, Dean was dressed, pacing two steps to the silent television, two steps to the bed, muttering like a crazy person off their meds. As soon as Sam entered, though, Dean calmed, too white and too worn. “Great. I’ll let it cool before trying to drink it in case I spill it all over me.”

“You sound like crap,” Sam said, pulling out his phone and dragging the bedraggled notepad closer to him. He sat by the laptop, fingering the number pad of his cell, eyes on Dean.

“I know. I think I’ve busted my vocal chords. Should be used to it, I guess. You got me pretty bad in the throat once, too. At the Falls. Remember? Jesus, if I had a dime for every time you’ve clocked me or shot me, I’d be rich. The shit I put up with.”

Sam had forgotten that, actually, had forgotten Dean’s silence back then. Had needed that memory to disappear if he was to enter the real world of Stanford. Had put it away as deliberately as Christmas decorations in January.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“Shit, I know you’re sorry. Even when you were fucking doing it, I knew you’d be sorry. I don’t want to be saying all this, I don’t.” He was trying to stop, but the compulsion was relentless; something had changed in the night and Sam saw it right away. “I always knew you were sorry, even when you didn’t know it. Like I said, you’re fucking transparent.”

Sam swallowed hard, not wanting to ask, hoping Dean would just go on, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to know. He needed to know. To take responsibility, he had to know.

“What happened? After I left?” he asked over Dean’s continuing mutters about Sam’s transparencies.

Though it didn’t shut him up, it did startle him, and Dean turned to Sam, eyes wide. “Oh god, Sam don’t ask me that. Please don’t ask me that. Because I’ll tell you and I don’t want to, I really don’t want to. You’re sorry, let’s leave it at that-” and suddenly, Dean was heading for the door fast, hand over his mouth, the words still coming, seeping through his fingers like the Demon had seeped through the floorboards in that goddamn South Dakota cabin.

A mistake, god a mistake, and Sam momentarily rested his forehead in his open hand, the other about to speed dial Bobby, but now guilt rushing to him like tide on a beach. The door was open to the icy outside and Sam could see Dean resting by the Impala, his head down, one hand across his stomach, the other roaming the surface of the car, beloved as a child, lips moving incessantly, head slowly shaking back and forth.

What was it like, after I left? Memories too hard to hold, let alone give voice. It was what Sam wanted and here it was and it was cursed. Dean would talk about anything, and Sam could apparently guide it.

It was a curse and he knew it.

Sam got to his feet, slowly walked through the open door into the too-bright parking lot, a large neon sign for Lucky Jack’s Casino looming over the far sidewalk like a psychedelic ogre. Dean looked up as Sam approached, but Sam was fast, put his hand over Dean’s mouth, held it there for a moment, saw the gratitude gleaming sharply in Dean’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Sam repeated, leaned his forehead for one brief moment against Dean’s, pulled away, but left his hand where it was. “I know I’ve been saying that a lot, but I mean it. I’m going to give Bobby a call. And if that doesn’t work, then Ash. I don’t know if either of them will know how to help, but I’ll figure it out.” He offered a small smile to Dean, like a child would offer his sitter a frog. “There’s an answer.”

Dean reached up, pulled Sam’s hand away, but held onto his wrist while he said, “Let it be? Is Mother Mary going to come to me?” This was rich fodder, family dynamics disguised as song lyrics. While Dean concentrated on that, Sam led them back into the motel room, where Dean cataloged the words to all the Beatles songs he knew – which was more than Sam had ever thought possible; British blues was one thing, the Beatles something else – and tried to drink his tepid coffee.

First ring, like the man was waiting for them. “Bobby,” Sam said. “We gotta problem.”

Sam outlined the bones of the curse; Dean rattled off the entirety of ‘A Day in the Life’.

Well, that is a problem, Bobby said, but he didn’t sound amused.

Sam had realized about halfway through his explanation that to anyone who knew Dean, this was the funniest thing, ever. This was justice. It was hard to convey gravitas, though, while Dean was ticking off what was going to happen when he was sixty-four and why anyone would call their grandkids Vera, Chuck or Dave.

Bobby didn’t know Dean in a slipshod manner, though. He knew him in a way that Sam was just beginning to understand; it stemmed from a time that he knew nothing about, and Bobby wasn’t finding this funny in the slightest.

You’ve tried blood sigils?

“Yeah. Didn’t work.” He took a deep breath. “Listen, are we going to have to backtrack, see if we can find out who cast this thing? Is that our only option?”

A silence, and Sam had a mental image of Bobby adjusting the sit of his cap, maybe taking it off altogether and rubbing his hand through his hair. Where the hell are you?

“Carson City,” Sam explained.

Well, goddamn, Bobby said, just as Dean wondered loudly why Rocky Raccoon had it so bad for some girl who couldn’t even get her own name straight. That’s blood soaked territory for sure. Comstock Lode and for every asshole who made a million pulling silver to the surface, there’s plenty more whose bones are underground. You hunting ghosts there? I’d love me a piece of that action. Why the hell do you think I settled in the Black Hills, anyway?

Gideon was busy helping with good Rocky’s revival and then Dean was on the d’do d’do section of the song and Sam thought that if he had a gun right then he might have gone all Daniel to Dean’s Rocky. “Bobby, I can barely hear you, Dean’s singing.”

That don’t sound like singing to me, Bobby replied. But if that spell didn’t work and you did it right, there’s only two possible explanations.

“What’re those?” Sam put one hand over his ear, but Dean’s voice was getting rougher all the time, quieter, the rustle of paper in a library.

Have you considered that maybe it’s not a curse?

“What?” Sam objected, knowing where Bobby was going. “He’s not on drugs, he’s not nuts. You think Dean’s having a psychotic break? He’s not crazy!” And looked at Dean, who smiled and shrugged unhelpfully: Maybe Bobby has a point, Sam.

Hold on, there, Samuel. Bobby had never sounded contrite in his life, wasn’t about to start now. Was even and solid and Sam was ready to worship the ground he walked on, as long as he wasn’t suggesting that Dean was clinically insane.

“Okay, what’s the other possibility?”

A pause, Bobby assembling words like chess pieces. Maybe, Sam, he’s not the one who’s cursed. Wise enough not to say anything further, would let Sam come to it like a spooked alley cat attracted by offered food.

“How could that be? Are you…” Sam gathered the evidence to him, stared at Dean, mouth moving, nothing coming out but thin air. “Are you saying that it’s my curse?”

Could be. You ever wish Dean would tell you stuff, open up a little?

Oh man. Sam kept his eyes on Dean, who had come three steps closer, head cocked to the side, trying to get a sip of coffee in between the wisps of verbiage. “Yeah. I’ve said it half a hundred times in the last week alone.”

Well, maybe it’s not a curse. Maybe someone granted you a wish. And there’s only one thing I can think of that grants double-edged gifts. At least one that knows you boys well enough to know the dilemma a gift like this presents.

“You’re joking.” Aw, man, this was worse than he thought. “A Trickster?”

Could be. If it’s your curse, performing a blood spell on Dean wouldn’t have any effect whatsoever. If it’s a Trickster causing this havoc, a blood spell won’t work no matter what. Were you talking to anyone at the bar the night before this happened?

“I’ve met two Tricksters in my life, Bobby, and the woman I was talking to definitely didn’t look like either of them.”

Dean’s voice grew louder, both because he was standing right beside Sam and because he was outraged.

“Goddamn it, Sam! A Trickster? I fucking should have known it. Why do you have to go opening up your goddamn sad sack story to every pretty thing that bats her eyelashes at you? You are a freak of nature, falling for it like that. A Trickster doesn’t have one fucking shape. It can change shape. Hell, maybe the girl slobbering all over you and your beer-soaked ass that night was one of the Trickster’s chicks.”

“We killed that one, remember?” Sam interjected, but Bobby was already telling him the same thing. Then something else occurred to him, had been there all along. “Wait a minute, Bobby,” and passed the phone to Dean, who said hello to Bobby and proceeded to tell him all about the Comstock Lode and the general plotline of Bonanza’s third season, Dean wondering why every girlfriend Little Joe ever fucking had got killed off. Bad for ratings, maybe, some kind of Cartwright curse.

Sam looked in his duffle bag, searching for the jeans he’d worn the night before last, thankful that the present crisis had prevented him from doing laundry. His hand found a crumpled gum wrapper and a torn receipt. He flipped the receipt over and read the telephone number under the name ‘Angelique’. No wonder he hadn’t pursued her; that was a stripper name if he’d ever heard one.

“Give me your phone,” he interrupted Dean’s long soliloquy on all things Ponderosa. Without pausing, without skipping a beat, Dean walked to his jacket, gave Sam his phone.

Carefully, Sam dialed the number. It rang five times before someone picked up.

The voice didn’t sound like it belonged to a stripper; it sounded like it belonged to a French cold war spy and all the hair on Sam’s neck stood up.

Hello Sam, Etienne Marcoux said, lanolin smooth. I was wondering when you were going to give Angelique a call.

Sam swallowed; it was made difficult because of the anger. “Take it back. Now.”

Oh, you’re going to hurt my feelings. I thought I was only giving you what you wanted.

Dean’s eyes were on him, but he was reciting the theme song lyrics from Bonanza now and Sam felt a little bit of his heart breaking as Dean said, “With the friendliest, fightingest, loving band that ever set foot in the promised land, and we’re happier than them all / That’s why we call it Bonanza. Is that not the crappiest theme song you’ve ever fucking heard, Bobby?”

Sam sighed into the phone. “You don’t get to do this to him. Make it stop.”

A pause as Etienne appeared to consider options. Maybe you should think about what you really asked for, Sam Winchester. Maybe think about what it would feel like to have to give that. Then come talk to me. And the line went dead.

Sam immediately tried the number again, not finished – I’m not finished with you, asshole – but only got a recording, informing him that no listing was attached to the number. Goddamn. Sam restrained the urge to throw the phone against the wall. It was Dean’s phone after all. Instead, he nodded to his brother, put Dean’s cell on the table.

“That freak from the Cirque,” was all he said.

“Etienne Mar-fucking-coux? He could be anywhere.” Dean gave him the phone, Bobby rendered silent on the other end. “He’s got some fucking sense of humor, that one.”

Sam rolled his eyes, angled away from Dean, because Bobby was talking again.

Sam? This is serious. Tricksters don’t lift their work, even if you can find them. People have to work out their own solutions. But if you find him, you might be able to make him talk, give you a clue.

No way did Sam have any confidence in getting Etienne to talk, even if he could find him again. Slippery. Not evil, not exactly, but operating on a level of moral superiority way above Sam’s head, which was saying something.

“Great,” Sam muttered. “We’ll see what we can find out at the bar. I just got off the phone with him. He said to ‘come talk to him’ and that’s the only place I can think of where he’d be.”

“Unless the Cirque’s in town,” Dean didn’t so much join the conversation as run right into it like a kid would the ocean. “Close enough to Las Vegas, aren’t we? That’s where they went.” He went on to detail the various things he’d like to do to the Trickster far more explicitly than Sam really wanted to know.

Be careful, Bobby warned. Like I said, there’s still a lot of silver in the ground around there, George fucking Hearst and his cronies didn’t get it all out. Lots of strange things got hid behind that silver. Playground for a Trickster. Hard to tell what’s safe and what’s open season, just like they like it. You’ll have to improvise. Bobby paused. It’s probably what the Trickster wants you to do. The point, you might say.

“For me to figure it out how to reverse it? For me to learn some kind of lesson?”

Bobby was too polite to say anything to that. Too smart. So Sam thanked him, slid the phone closed and looked at Dean, hunched over, small sounds escaping from him. Still, when he felt Sam’s attention, he pulled straighter, small smile tugging his moving lips.

“Please tell me I’m going to get another crack at that asshole. Because I’d love nothing more than that.” He cleared his throat and Sam didn’t have to imagine how sore that must be. “We have a whole day to kill before that bar opens. Cards?”

--

Never in his life had Sam won so many hands of poker. It wasn’t hard to win when Dean kept telling him what was in his hand. No matter how hard Dean tried, his attention kept wandering enough that he’d let slip what he had and what he needed and then he’d just slam his hand down on the table in frustration.

Sam was pretty sure that Dean wanted to throttle him, but somehow, Dean had managed to keep those words out of his mouth. The only thing he seemed to have control over now, the not-telling Sam that he’d like to kill him. By virtue of the fact that it had held out till last, Sam knew it was the most important, which somehow made it worse.

Sam was learning, though. Every time they got close to something important, something that Sam yearned to have, some missing piece of Dean that Sam recognized if only by the known territory surrounding the void, Sam forced himself to deflect the conversation with a well-placed question about seventies television, or he turned up the music on his computer, listened to Dean make up words to songs he didn’t know.

It was a question of ethics and rights, and Sam had always had a moral stick up his ass, even he would admit it. He wouldn’t take advantage of Dean this way. Couldn’t.

Opening hour wasn’t coming fast enough.

It was a long shot, for sure, that Etienne would be conveniently waiting at the bar, ready to release Sam from whatever wish he’d inadvisably made. Not a curse. A wish. Goddamn Tricksters and their lawyer’s adherence to the spoken word. Assholes.

They walked in, Dean refusing to wait in the car, not if he had even the slimmest chance of punching Etienne Marcoux in the face, the bar dark after the clarity of the mountain afternoon. Dark, but not dark enough to disguise the fact that no one bore even a remote resemblance to the wiry Etienne.

Sam got them both a beer, avoiding a group of large men who looked as though they drove trucks for a living, all of them big as Highland Games athletes. The bar was rougher than Sam remembered, the kind of place that he usually avoided getting drunk in.

Angelique had bought him his third and fourth drinks, Sam suddenly remembered. Fuck it, I was played. He described Etienne Marcoux to the bartender, the same one from the other night, but even as he sketched out a description – exquisitely short, hard-to-pin ethnicity, dapper, flattop haircut, probably dressed in expensive European suits – Sam realized that the Trickster would have stood out like a peacock in a henhouse.

He carried the two brimming glasses back to Dean, who was murmuring under his breath, looking at the pool table longingly.

“Don’t even think about it,” Sam advised, sliding the beer to Dean. He took it, eyed it, and tried to take a sip before spilling half of it on the table.

“Shit,” he whispered. “C’mon. The bartender must have seen something. You ask about the girl who put this fucking thing on you? You didn’t, did you? You’re a freakin’ monk. Just like Dad, letting your obsession get the better part of the good times. What would one night have cost you? What would one night have cost him?”

He stopped himself, barely, staring hard at Sam.

“And how come even when you get cursed, I’m the one who suffers for it? It’s a fucking pathetic joke, that’s what this is. The gods have never liked me,” and he got up, crossed to the bar and Sam followed him out of fear more than anything else.

He had reason, because as soon as Dean leaned against the bar, one boot up on the brass rail running along the floor, the bartender for the moment occupied at the far end of the counter, Sam knew what was going to happen. Shit, it was bad enough when Dean had ostensible control over his mouth. So much worse now.

Because one of the truckers – or miners, or caber-tossers – bent and greasy cap perched precariously on the back of a balding head, ginger moustache fringing a mouth fully occupied with his third or fourth beer of the day, noticed Dean.

Gave him a look.

Dean never took kindly to being given a look, the kind that sized him up, judged him, ran a mental measuring tape around his merit, took stock of his defenses. Sole purpose to determine whether he could fight, or steal someone’s girlfriend, or win at any game he put his mind to: pool, darts, foosball.

“You are so not my type,” Dean said quickly, fingering the condensation on his glass. “So stop looking at me that way. You know, that cap does not disguise the fact that you’re losing all your hair. I hear some chicks dig that, so that’s fine. You should stop worrying about it, because that’s not your problem. You’re not married are you? No fucking wonder, you should think about maybe expanding your idea of a date by actually asking a woman out. Trouble is, guys like you always get on with the other guys, right, but when it comes to women, you don’t have a fucking clue. It’s like that guy in the 40-year-old Virgin or that baseball movie about Boston and the World Series. You know, the one with Drew Barrymore. Don’t have a fucking clue how that one came back from the partying – must be hell to have a famous family. They screw with you, families, don’t they? But what can you do? You’re stuck with them.”

Sam watched in horror as Balding Cap Guy came to his feet. He was big, which didn’t normally alarm Sam, not when it came to Dean, but there were circumstances to consider, not the least of which was that they needed to find the origin of their problem and Sam was pretty sure Etienne wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a battered cap that declared Virginia was for Lovers.

The bartender noticed an altercation was in its initial stages, came over, eyeing them intently. She looked as though she wasn’t above knocking their heads together or throwing them out on their asses, either outcome completely undesirable.

“We gotta problem here?” she asked, basilisk calm.

“No problem,” Dean and Sam said at the same time. Dean was the one who continued, of course. “Listen, sweetheart,” and surprisingly, Sam watched as the sharp bartender smiled a little at the word ‘sweetheart’. When he means it, he means it, Sam thought. “My brother here, you remember the girl he was talking to night before last?”

But of course, couldn’t wait for the response. That was the problem.

“I told him he should have taken her home, but he’s such a fucking putz when it comes to these things, almost as bad as my friend here,” and he jerked his thumb at Cap. “I tell you, it’s somewhere between traveling with a monk and an idiot savant some days. Dopey as hell, most of the time. I can’t for the life of me figure out why he always liked that dwarf best, either. I mean, Dopey always scared me. I kinda liked Grumpy. Or, tell you the truth, even Bashful was better.”

He was getting stared at and no wonder.

“Bashful wanted to jump Snow White’s bones, too. Sammy’s not Bashful, though. Dopey, definitely. The whole story was stupid as hell. Love’s true kiss. What a load of crap.” He turned to Cap. “You still staring at me, asshole, because I’m good for it-”

“I oughta-” but Cap didn’t get much further; Sam stepped between them.

Behind him, close against him, Sam heard Dean keep going. “Yeah, you oughta what, cementhead? You’re all about what you oughta do instead of what you can do, am I right? Sam, step the fuck away. This goofy jerk wants a piece of me and who can blame him? He’s frustrated in every other way, might as well take a swing at me. Surprised those fucking dwarves didn’t haul off on each other all the time. What is it with dwarves? It’s genetic, right? Used to freak me out a little, tell you the truth…”

Dear god, he wasn’t going to start in with the gay hobbits again, was he? Keeping one eye on Cap, who indeed looked as though he’d climb over Sam to get to Dean, Sam turned.

“Dean, we should go,” he tried whispering, but Dean was having none of it. Not that Sam could blame him, not after the last twenty-four hours.

“Go? We’re not going anywhere until we figure this out. This is your curse, not mine. You work it out, Sam, work out a way to break it, to – aw, jesus, I don’t know – to act on your stupid wish, to give back what it is that you were asking for. You know, pay it back, or make it come full circle-” and then was on to the Circle of Life and how Walt Disney had fucked up every great story there ever was and Sam’s mind was going faster than Dean’s mouth for once.

Because what Dean was saying actually made sense. All of it came together, a Tetris game going at light speed, each falling block fitting together, Sam turning and Dean turning and all that blather, all that nonsense, suddenly making sense.

What had Sam really wanted?

For Dean to trust him enough to tell him. For Dean to open up, for him to show Sam what was inside.

What would it feel like to truly give that?

The mirror act wasn’t possible; no way could Sam compete with Dean’s mouth, nor would Dean want him to. But somehow the idea of the reciprocal gift and dwarves and Disney-fied folktales all coalesced and Sam was forced to concede that he needed to make his own luck.

Dean had both elbows on the bar, back arched to protect his sore belly, yammering on about Old Yeller now, hands fisted, ready for what was to come.

Well, not quite ready, Sam thought briefly, leaning in.

The kiss Sam gave him was long and shocking, as it was meant to be. He had to make it count, had to invest it with all the warped longing and suppressed emotion that cloaked everything Dean did. Sam had to give it back.

At first, Dean’s mouth was still moving, still going on about it being his dog and that he had to kill it, and something struck Sam obliquely there, with those words. It was stupid and it was sad and it hurt deep down. Then Dean’s mouth held still, shivered, responded to what Sam was giving him.

For once, giving.

Such a long kiss that Sam was breathless when he finally pulled away, eyes locked on Dean’s, not asking for forgiveness this time, knowing full well what he’d done.

Dean’s mouth opened, then shut. The swallow he took was noticeable. And silent.

The bartender was still calm, this time with a tiny smile that Sam only half understood. Sam closed his eyes, turned away, utterly overwhelmed.

“What a bunch of fucking freaks,” was all the warning he got that Cap was offended and on the move.

Bar fights were common enough to have a usual rhythm for Sam, but it wasn’t as though either were in top form, what with the lack of food and the lifted wish. What with the sheer exhaustion. What with the kiss.

Luckily, Sweetheart the Bartender had a shotgun and that shut everyone up pretty fucking fast, even Dean. They left on their own accord, Dean looking regretfully at his beer as he grabbed his coat.

No words were said on the way back to the Impala; Dean held his hand out for the keys and Sam passed them to him.

They sat for moment before Dean turned the engine over, just breathing the cold air. After all, there wasn’t much left to say.

-30-