"More Than a Feeling"
“More Than a Feeling”
Prompt: Someone (inadvertently or not, up to you) puts the malocchio on Dean. Symptoms may include: illness (sneezing! I mean, what?), feeling of unease, uncontrollable crying, dizziness, headaches, indigestion, bad luck, dehydration, death. Obviously not death, please! Whichever other ones are up to you, or invent your own - I'm not fussy. :) Cures range from making obscene sex gestures at the evil-eye-giver (yes, really) to throwing salt over your shoulder into an oven, but the boys don't have to find that out immediately. Sam has plenty of time to be all, 'Dude, really?', and also be super-awesome like we all know he is, and maybe be surprised that someone was jealous enough to malocchio-ise Dean, to which Dean is all, 'Uh, excuse me, I'm extremely hot.'
Disclaimer/Author’s Note: For the lovely onefulloctave's birthday. Title is taken from the song by Boston. I tweaked the prompt a little bit to fit the Latin-American version of the disease, mal de ojo, since I had to study it for a class last semester. Finally, education paying off! Set directly after 3.01, "The Magnificent Seven."
Summary: In which Dean is cursed with the evil eye, and Sam is metaphorically Nancy Drew.
Wordcount: about 2900
It was the kind of story that you said was one to tell the grandkids. Except Dean’s not planning on having children of any kind, and even if he did, he wouldn’t tell them anything about the real world.
Disregarding that, it’s a memorable case, for sure.
~~~~~
“Did I hear that right? Did she really want you to do… modeling?”
“No. Yes. Maybe.”
“Why’d you say no? You could be the next Fabio!”
“Nah, that seems more like your kinda gig. What with the hair and all.”
“Humph.”
“You know, I’m actually surprised she didn’t ask you-they wouldn’t even have to remind you to pout.”
“Your wit astounds me.”
“Same here, dude.”
Sam rustles the newspaper and clears his throat.
“Case, Dean?”
“Case? Case of what? Isn’t it a little early to be buying liquor?”
“You know, I’m perfectly capable of doing this on my own. Just let me know.”
“No, no, keep going. The sound of your voice… it’s soothing. I could fall asleep.”
Dean’s boots are perched on their café table, and he’s leaning his chair back precariously, his hands behind his head.
Sam rolls his eyes.
“I heard that.”
“What? I didn’t do anything.”
“You rolled your eyes. After being subjected to your lovely presence for so long, I’ve become attuned to it.”
“If God were merciful, he’d inflict you with laryngitis.”
“Yeah, and if He existed, he wouldn’t have inflicted me with you.”
“Can we get back to the case in point here?”
“Oh, very funny, Sam. A pun.”
Dean reaches over and takes a French fry from Sam’s plate.
“Alright, what’ve we got?”
“Looks like a simple salt n’ burn.”
“Since when have we ever done ‘simple’?”
“Uh… remember that waitress a few towns back? Well, maybe you don’t. But I do.”
“She wasn’t a waitress, she was a budding young actress.”
“So you do remember.”
“Vaguely.”
“That’s probably good.”
Dean pulls Sam’s plate all the way across the table.
“Just get on with it, Young Goodman Brown,” he says around a mouthful of fries, and Sam glares at him.
“Not funny, Dean.”
Dean shrugs, still chewing. He looks at Sam for a long moment, and then swallows.
“Hey, I’m not the one reading Goethe.”
~~~~~
And for once it really is a simple, straightforward case.
Just kidding.
The case itself may not have been their most difficult, but the complications that ensue more than make up for that.
It’s been a while since they’ve actually taken on a job like this, really, so it’s almost comforting, in that Stockholm Syndrome sort of way.
Dennis Creed, 44. As in 1944. Says so on the headstone.
“Waitress told me,” Dean says around a mouthful of donut, “that they shipped his body back to the States, and when they opened the box, he sat up.”
“Oh, so that one was just a waitress?”
“Shut up, Sam, she was at least sixty.”
“I didn’t know that there were cougars in these parts. We should notify the rangers, or something.”
“Aaahhhh-kuutsch-schoo!”
“Pardon?”
“Seems I’m allergic to bitches, Sammy.” Dean bends down to examine the headstone more closely. He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “You ready to dig?”
“In daylight?”
Dean stands up again, surveys the cemetery. There’s a hearse cresting a hill on the other side, and a parade of cars behind it. “Guess not.”
They go to speak with the remaining members of the Creed family, instead. The elderly Mrs. Creed takes an immediate liking to Dean, and insists on sitting next to him at the kitchen table.
“Twelve times, Sam. Twelve.” Dean’s wiping sweat from his forehead as they leave the house.
“Twelve what?” Sam plays innocent.
“Times I had to forcibly remove her hand from my thigh.”
“How many?”
“Are you deaf? I said twelve!”
“No, no, I meant how many times you just left it there.”
“Ahhhh-hutxx-shuh!”
Dean lays his head on the steering wheel and closes his eyes. His voice is starting to sound slightly congested. “Kill be dow.”
Neither of them can look at each other after that statement. It’s still too close, and it will remain as such. Words that are sharp enough to cut to the bone always do. It’s made worse by the fact that it wasn’t even meant as such- but as they can attest, sometimes it’s a dull edge that hurts the worst- rust in the wounds.
~~~~~
Dean’s looking decidedly pale when they make it back to the motel after researching things at the library and having supper.
He flops on his bed almost immediately after coming through the door, and commences to rubbing his stomach.
“You okay?”
“No, I’m fan-fucking-tastic.” Dean shoves one boot off with the toe of the other, lets it drop to the floor.
“What’s wrong?”
“Stomach. Fucking hurts.” The other boot drops and falls over sideways, laces askew, like discarded I.V. lines after the patient had already bought their ticket and paid up in full.
“You didn’t eat much.”
“God, Nancy. Go consult with your chums or something if you can’t figure it out. How’d you end up dating Ned, anyway? Did you literally run into him?”
Sam sits on the bed across from his brother, takes off his own shoes and sets them neatly next to each other.
“Listen, you want some Tums or something?”
“Whatever.” There’s a dull flush climbing up Dean’s cheeks now. Sam stands there for a moment, thinking about asking his brother whether dying has made him indecisive all of a sudden, but decides against it.
Dean swallows the pills Sam brings him, offers a muttered, “Thanks, bitch.”
“Looks like the stomach of steel is an alloy,” Sam says.
“Dude. Steel is an alloy,” Dean says around a grimace.
“Yeah, I know.”
“That makes no sense. Go play with your magnifying glass, Nancy. Lemme sleep.”
“Sure thing, George,” Sam tosses back. “Or do you prefer Bess?”
~~~~~
The next morning’s unflinchingly sunny, as if to remind them that they’d agreed to this purchase, Dean had signed for it, and it was theirs now to keep and they should probably fucking enjoy it while they still could.
“Hey Dean,” Sam calls from the doorway of the motel. “Alex Trebek called. He has a message for you.”
“Fuck you, Sam.”
“That wasn’t it. You don’t win Final Jeopardy.”
Dean pushes past his brother, snatches the keys out of his hand without looking at him.
“You feeling better, at least?”
Dean coughs, a throaty, hacking noise that sounds like it hurts, and it’s answer enough for the question. Once they’re in the car, Dean takes a minute to turn on his phone.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“I have, like, twenty missed calls from that model casting girl.”
“Wait, wait, wait. You gave her your number?”
“I thought it would get rid of her faster!”
“Great idea, Dean. Really spectacular.”
As if on cue, Dean’s phone starts to ring again as he’s starting the car. He tosses it over and it lands in Sam’s lap.
“Don’t answer that,” Dean threatens in gravel tone, as if Sam actually would.
The day starts with a stop at the funeral home to speak with the undertaker, whose grandfather had actually been the one to see it happen.
Sam’s pretending to take notes on a stenographer’s pad. “So you said that your grandfather said that the kid wasn’t dead when he opened the casket?”
“Yeah.” The undertaker runs his hand through his hair. “Sounded pretty freaky from what I heard. The military had some coroner come out, got it all written off as some sort of weird postmortem reflex. But the way Grandpa told it,” he lowers his voice, “the kid was still alive when they shipped him back, but he wasn’t all there.”
“You mean he had some limbs missing?” It’s the first thing Dean’s said throughout the interview, if you don’t count sneezes or coughs.
“Uh, no.” Apparently, if you work with death long enough, your sense of humor follows suit, jumping in the hole right after your appropriate dinner party stories.
The undertaker clears his throat, glances around uncomfortably. “Anyway, um, I guess they ended up having to, uh, add another gunshot wound to the coroner’s report.”
~~~~~
Dean’s already loosening his tie before they’re even out of the funeral home.
“What did you think?” Sam asks.
“Well,” observes Dean. “No one read Pet Sematary very closely.”
“You were waiting to say that, huh?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Figured the dude in there wouldn’t get it.” Dean doubles over with a sudden coughing fit. Leans up against the Impala and tries to catch his breath.
“Hey.”
Dean looks up at his brother. His pupils are huge, and his cheeks are flushed again.
It should feel weird, Sam standing in the middle of the street with the back of his hand pressed to his brother’s forehead, but for some reason it doesn’t. It just feels like something he should’ve done a while ago, and something he might not have a chance to do again.
“Dean.” Sam puts it in statement form as soon as he’s herded him over to the passenger side. “This feels wrong. Like a curse or something.”
“Damn witches.” Dean sneezes again, retrieves his suit jacket from the backseat, and wipes his nose with the sleeve.
“Hey,” he says, as though the idea’s just struck him. A bolt of lightning to a lightning rod. “Maybe it was that model chick.”
Sam thinks it over. “Could be, I guess. But you have some pretty weird and diverse symptoms, man. That would have to be a pretty wicked hex bag. Besides, where would she have put it?”
Suddenly Dean’s phone starts to ring again, cutting off Sam’s line of questioning.
“God, that’s going to get annoying.”
“You think?” Sam reaches over to take Dean’s phone from him. “Besides, if we are dealing with a witch here, she may be able to locate you using the GPS on that thing.”
“Oh, gee, I didn’t realize witches were into that kinda stuff now. We should notify the Charmed girls that books are out of style.”
“Actually, the covens I’ve heard about seem to be very tech-savvy.”
“I was being facetious, Sam,” Dean says wearily.
“What, did you get a word-of-the-day calendar or something? Facetious?”
“Hey, if you don’t know what it means, get out your thesaurus. I’m not going to waste my time on the banalities of language.”
“Oh, is that what you told that waitress the other night? Or did she just understand that your slurrings were some form of higher communication?”
“Fuu-uutsch-shoo! you, Sab.”
~~~~~
They end up turning off Dean’s phone and simply agreeing to stick together until this whole thing is over. It’s a great idea, in theory. Then again, so is communism.
They’re outside the library. Sam had a sudden idea about Dean’s weird symptoms.
“You are a freak of nature,” Dean tells him from where he’s stretched out on a couch in the library basement.
“I figured it out, though, didn’t I?”
“Mal de o-oh-hutschoo!-ojo? Can you tell me what it is, again?”
“It’s like the evil eye,” Sam explains. “Usually, it occurs when someone sees a child and wants it for their own, so I’m having a little trouble figuring out why you have it, but still. It fits.”
“Uh, Nance?” Dean sits up on the couch, rubs his forehead.
“Yes?” Sam replies grudgingly.
“I’m kind of a stud.”
~~~~~
Walking back to the car, Dean suddenly trips spectacularly on a crack in the sidewalk.
“God, what was that?”
“The ground?” Dean offers hoarsely, and then sneezes while he’s still sprawled out. “Fu-huut-tsch-schoo!”
“Hey, give me the keys, man, and I’ll get the car ready while you collect the shreds of your dignity.”
Dean just looks at his brother.
“Don’t tell me you lost the car keys.”
“Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“I won’t tell you.”
He’s dusting off his suit, and stuffing his tie into his pocket, giving Sam a defiant expression like, what else have you got for me today, Karma.
“Well,” Sam says cheerfully. “Guess we’re walking.”
“Walking where?” Dean coughs into his fist.
“To the curandera- the lady who will fix this curse for you.”
“Oh.”
Dean’s halfway down the street before he hears Sam calling him back, jingling the kidnapped car keys in his hand, and for half a second Sam thinks that he’s just going to keep walking, from sheer stubbornness.
Sam pulls up next to the curb instead of making his brother walk all the way back.
“Bitch,” is the first thing Dean says.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “That’s what karma makes of you, huh?”
~~~~~
The curandera has a little shop on a side street downtown. It’s small but cozy, filled with hundreds of packets of ground up leaves, many of which she points out and explains, shoving them into Sam’s hands and having him sniff. They all seem the same to him, but he lets her chatter on as she leads them into the back room.
“So,” she starts out, hands on hips. “I hear you bring me your brother, and you think that someone has put the mal de ojo on him, yes?”
“Verdad,” Sam says. “That’s right.”
Dean’s following behind, coughing softly into his collar.
The curandera pulls up a chair for him, and he sinks down into it. She gives him a perfunctory once-over, and then turns back to Sam.
“So, your brother. He likes his ladies, yes?”
“Yeah, he tries very hard to be sexy.” Sam smirks.
“I don’t try, I succeed!” Dean calls after her retreating back, but she just waves a hand at him. She returns in a few moments with an egg. Both brothers are, for once, speechless. And remain so as the curandera skims the egg over Dean’s body, paying special attention to his stomach and throat. She’s humming off-key as she works, an old song by Boston. They watch closely as she then takes the egg and breaks it into a bowl, and swirls the yolk around.
“It was a woman who cursed you,” she tells Dean. “But not on purpose. You were just… you pleased her much to look at, I think.” She stands up and puts the bowl on the counter, and places her hands on her hips again, seeming satisfied.
“So… I’m cured?” Dean hazards.
“Sí, sí.”
“Do we owe you anything?” Sam asks as she’s leading them back out through the store. She turns around and looks up at him, like she’s seeing through to his mangled soul.
“No,” she replies softly. “You and your brother have already paid, I think.”
~~~~~
And that’s it. For the curse part, anyway. Sam thinks that it’s apt, that Dean didn’t even do anything, and he got cursed.
Now all that’s left is finishing up the original case here, and then they can head on down the endless highway. Put their feet up on the dashboard and pretend like they could keep going forever.
Dean’s down in the hole when Sam starts to say it. Something about the ‘before’ part of the deal. About taking care of himself and living the best that he could, or some other such deathbed bullshit.
“Listen,” Dean tells him quietly, pausing his digging. “Don’t ‘stay gold, Ponyboy’ me.”
“I won’t,” Sam promises.
“What, then? Do you want to hold hands and keep on driving or something?” Dean rams his shovel through the wooden casket, and then heaves it open. He hauls himself out of the grave, and stands next to his brother.
As the flames flicker and they watch them die down in silence, there’s time to think.
More and more lately, Dean’s been wondering, what did it sound like at the end? Was it that atonal beep that persisted, lingered making bloodstains in the air as your coffee puddled on the floor, or was it rainwater sloshing in your ears while you repeated an endless litany of lies that didn’t bring either of you back from the brink? Dean would like to imagine that it’s neither of those things. Not a combination, either- just an ending. A final, real fucking ending. Turn all the pages, burn the book, grind the ashes under your heel and don’t ever look back. He likes to imagine that it’s the complete absence of sound.
Bobby’d told them to get ready, because the war was just starting. Dean remembers reading something once-what was it that Clausewitz had said? Never start a war you hadn’t already won?
Huh. Well, it was just advice after all, no need to follow it. World War II had turned out well, right? Vietnam?
~~~~~
They walk back to the car in silence, too, because if they’d learned anything by now, it was that you didn’t waste time with useless talking.
Driving off into the night, Dean wonders, when was it, that the click of a gun cocking started to sound like a heartbeat? When you stopped measuring in years and started using moments?
When was it exactly, when you learned that the question was never if, but when.
Prompt: Someone (inadvertently or not, up to you) puts the malocchio on Dean. Symptoms may include: illness (sneezing! I mean, what?), feeling of unease, uncontrollable crying, dizziness, headaches, indigestion, bad luck, dehydration, death. Obviously not death, please! Whichever other ones are up to you, or invent your own - I'm not fussy. :) Cures range from making obscene sex gestures at the evil-eye-giver (yes, really) to throwing salt over your shoulder into an oven, but the boys don't have to find that out immediately. Sam has plenty of time to be all, 'Dude, really?', and also be super-awesome like we all know he is, and maybe be surprised that someone was jealous enough to malocchio-ise Dean, to which Dean is all, 'Uh, excuse me, I'm extremely hot.'
Disclaimer/Author’s Note: For the lovely onefulloctave's birthday. Title is taken from the song by Boston. I tweaked the prompt a little bit to fit the Latin-American version of the disease, mal de ojo, since I had to study it for a class last semester. Finally, education paying off! Set directly after 3.01, "The Magnificent Seven."
Summary: In which Dean is cursed with the evil eye, and Sam is metaphorically Nancy Drew.
Wordcount: about 2900
It was the kind of story that you said was one to tell the grandkids. Except Dean’s not planning on having children of any kind, and even if he did, he wouldn’t tell them anything about the real world.
Disregarding that, it’s a memorable case, for sure.
~~~~~
“Did I hear that right? Did she really want you to do… modeling?”
“No. Yes. Maybe.”
“Why’d you say no? You could be the next Fabio!”
“Nah, that seems more like your kinda gig. What with the hair and all.”
“Humph.”
“You know, I’m actually surprised she didn’t ask you-they wouldn’t even have to remind you to pout.”
“Your wit astounds me.”
“Same here, dude.”
Sam rustles the newspaper and clears his throat.
“Case, Dean?”
“Case? Case of what? Isn’t it a little early to be buying liquor?”
“You know, I’m perfectly capable of doing this on my own. Just let me know.”
“No, no, keep going. The sound of your voice… it’s soothing. I could fall asleep.”
Dean’s boots are perched on their café table, and he’s leaning his chair back precariously, his hands behind his head.
Sam rolls his eyes.
“I heard that.”
“What? I didn’t do anything.”
“You rolled your eyes. After being subjected to your lovely presence for so long, I’ve become attuned to it.”
“If God were merciful, he’d inflict you with laryngitis.”
“Yeah, and if He existed, he wouldn’t have inflicted me with you.”
“Can we get back to the case in point here?”
“Oh, very funny, Sam. A pun.”
Dean reaches over and takes a French fry from Sam’s plate.
“Alright, what’ve we got?”
“Looks like a simple salt n’ burn.”
“Since when have we ever done ‘simple’?”
“Uh… remember that waitress a few towns back? Well, maybe you don’t. But I do.”
“She wasn’t a waitress, she was a budding young actress.”
“So you do remember.”
“Vaguely.”
“That’s probably good.”
Dean pulls Sam’s plate all the way across the table.
“Just get on with it, Young Goodman Brown,” he says around a mouthful of fries, and Sam glares at him.
“Not funny, Dean.”
Dean shrugs, still chewing. He looks at Sam for a long moment, and then swallows.
“Hey, I’m not the one reading Goethe.”
~~~~~
And for once it really is a simple, straightforward case.
Just kidding.
The case itself may not have been their most difficult, but the complications that ensue more than make up for that.
It’s been a while since they’ve actually taken on a job like this, really, so it’s almost comforting, in that Stockholm Syndrome sort of way.
Dennis Creed, 44. As in 1944. Says so on the headstone.
“Waitress told me,” Dean says around a mouthful of donut, “that they shipped his body back to the States, and when they opened the box, he sat up.”
“Oh, so that one was just a waitress?”
“Shut up, Sam, she was at least sixty.”
“I didn’t know that there were cougars in these parts. We should notify the rangers, or something.”
“Aaahhhh-kuutsch-schoo!”
“Pardon?”
“Seems I’m allergic to bitches, Sammy.” Dean bends down to examine the headstone more closely. He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “You ready to dig?”
“In daylight?”
Dean stands up again, surveys the cemetery. There’s a hearse cresting a hill on the other side, and a parade of cars behind it. “Guess not.”
They go to speak with the remaining members of the Creed family, instead. The elderly Mrs. Creed takes an immediate liking to Dean, and insists on sitting next to him at the kitchen table.
“Twelve times, Sam. Twelve.” Dean’s wiping sweat from his forehead as they leave the house.
“Twelve what?” Sam plays innocent.
“Times I had to forcibly remove her hand from my thigh.”
“How many?”
“Are you deaf? I said twelve!”
“No, no, I meant how many times you just left it there.”
“Ahhhh-hutxx-shuh!”
Dean lays his head on the steering wheel and closes his eyes. His voice is starting to sound slightly congested. “Kill be dow.”
Neither of them can look at each other after that statement. It’s still too close, and it will remain as such. Words that are sharp enough to cut to the bone always do. It’s made worse by the fact that it wasn’t even meant as such- but as they can attest, sometimes it’s a dull edge that hurts the worst- rust in the wounds.
~~~~~
Dean’s looking decidedly pale when they make it back to the motel after researching things at the library and having supper.
He flops on his bed almost immediately after coming through the door, and commences to rubbing his stomach.
“You okay?”
“No, I’m fan-fucking-tastic.” Dean shoves one boot off with the toe of the other, lets it drop to the floor.
“What’s wrong?”
“Stomach. Fucking hurts.” The other boot drops and falls over sideways, laces askew, like discarded I.V. lines after the patient had already bought their ticket and paid up in full.
“You didn’t eat much.”
“God, Nancy. Go consult with your chums or something if you can’t figure it out. How’d you end up dating Ned, anyway? Did you literally run into him?”
Sam sits on the bed across from his brother, takes off his own shoes and sets them neatly next to each other.
“Listen, you want some Tums or something?”
“Whatever.” There’s a dull flush climbing up Dean’s cheeks now. Sam stands there for a moment, thinking about asking his brother whether dying has made him indecisive all of a sudden, but decides against it.
Dean swallows the pills Sam brings him, offers a muttered, “Thanks, bitch.”
“Looks like the stomach of steel is an alloy,” Sam says.
“Dude. Steel is an alloy,” Dean says around a grimace.
“Yeah, I know.”
“That makes no sense. Go play with your magnifying glass, Nancy. Lemme sleep.”
“Sure thing, George,” Sam tosses back. “Or do you prefer Bess?”
~~~~~
The next morning’s unflinchingly sunny, as if to remind them that they’d agreed to this purchase, Dean had signed for it, and it was theirs now to keep and they should probably fucking enjoy it while they still could.
“Hey Dean,” Sam calls from the doorway of the motel. “Alex Trebek called. He has a message for you.”
“Fuck you, Sam.”
“That wasn’t it. You don’t win Final Jeopardy.”
Dean pushes past his brother, snatches the keys out of his hand without looking at him.
“You feeling better, at least?”
Dean coughs, a throaty, hacking noise that sounds like it hurts, and it’s answer enough for the question. Once they’re in the car, Dean takes a minute to turn on his phone.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“I have, like, twenty missed calls from that model casting girl.”
“Wait, wait, wait. You gave her your number?”
“I thought it would get rid of her faster!”
“Great idea, Dean. Really spectacular.”
As if on cue, Dean’s phone starts to ring again as he’s starting the car. He tosses it over and it lands in Sam’s lap.
“Don’t answer that,” Dean threatens in gravel tone, as if Sam actually would.
The day starts with a stop at the funeral home to speak with the undertaker, whose grandfather had actually been the one to see it happen.
Sam’s pretending to take notes on a stenographer’s pad. “So you said that your grandfather said that the kid wasn’t dead when he opened the casket?”
“Yeah.” The undertaker runs his hand through his hair. “Sounded pretty freaky from what I heard. The military had some coroner come out, got it all written off as some sort of weird postmortem reflex. But the way Grandpa told it,” he lowers his voice, “the kid was still alive when they shipped him back, but he wasn’t all there.”
“You mean he had some limbs missing?” It’s the first thing Dean’s said throughout the interview, if you don’t count sneezes or coughs.
“Uh, no.” Apparently, if you work with death long enough, your sense of humor follows suit, jumping in the hole right after your appropriate dinner party stories.
The undertaker clears his throat, glances around uncomfortably. “Anyway, um, I guess they ended up having to, uh, add another gunshot wound to the coroner’s report.”
~~~~~
Dean’s already loosening his tie before they’re even out of the funeral home.
“What did you think?” Sam asks.
“Well,” observes Dean. “No one read Pet Sematary very closely.”
“You were waiting to say that, huh?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Figured the dude in there wouldn’t get it.” Dean doubles over with a sudden coughing fit. Leans up against the Impala and tries to catch his breath.
“Hey.”
Dean looks up at his brother. His pupils are huge, and his cheeks are flushed again.
It should feel weird, Sam standing in the middle of the street with the back of his hand pressed to his brother’s forehead, but for some reason it doesn’t. It just feels like something he should’ve done a while ago, and something he might not have a chance to do again.
“Dean.” Sam puts it in statement form as soon as he’s herded him over to the passenger side. “This feels wrong. Like a curse or something.”
“Damn witches.” Dean sneezes again, retrieves his suit jacket from the backseat, and wipes his nose with the sleeve.
“Hey,” he says, as though the idea’s just struck him. A bolt of lightning to a lightning rod. “Maybe it was that model chick.”
Sam thinks it over. “Could be, I guess. But you have some pretty weird and diverse symptoms, man. That would have to be a pretty wicked hex bag. Besides, where would she have put it?”
Suddenly Dean’s phone starts to ring again, cutting off Sam’s line of questioning.
“God, that’s going to get annoying.”
“You think?” Sam reaches over to take Dean’s phone from him. “Besides, if we are dealing with a witch here, she may be able to locate you using the GPS on that thing.”
“Oh, gee, I didn’t realize witches were into that kinda stuff now. We should notify the Charmed girls that books are out of style.”
“Actually, the covens I’ve heard about seem to be very tech-savvy.”
“I was being facetious, Sam,” Dean says wearily.
“What, did you get a word-of-the-day calendar or something? Facetious?”
“Hey, if you don’t know what it means, get out your thesaurus. I’m not going to waste my time on the banalities of language.”
“Oh, is that what you told that waitress the other night? Or did she just understand that your slurrings were some form of higher communication?”
“Fuu-uutsch-shoo! you, Sab.”
~~~~~
They end up turning off Dean’s phone and simply agreeing to stick together until this whole thing is over. It’s a great idea, in theory. Then again, so is communism.
They’re outside the library. Sam had a sudden idea about Dean’s weird symptoms.
“You are a freak of nature,” Dean tells him from where he’s stretched out on a couch in the library basement.
“I figured it out, though, didn’t I?”
“Mal de o-oh-hutschoo!-ojo? Can you tell me what it is, again?”
“It’s like the evil eye,” Sam explains. “Usually, it occurs when someone sees a child and wants it for their own, so I’m having a little trouble figuring out why you have it, but still. It fits.”
“Uh, Nance?” Dean sits up on the couch, rubs his forehead.
“Yes?” Sam replies grudgingly.
“I’m kind of a stud.”
~~~~~
Walking back to the car, Dean suddenly trips spectacularly on a crack in the sidewalk.
“God, what was that?”
“The ground?” Dean offers hoarsely, and then sneezes while he’s still sprawled out. “Fu-huut-tsch-schoo!”
“Hey, give me the keys, man, and I’ll get the car ready while you collect the shreds of your dignity.”
Dean just looks at his brother.
“Don’t tell me you lost the car keys.”
“Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“I won’t tell you.”
He’s dusting off his suit, and stuffing his tie into his pocket, giving Sam a defiant expression like, what else have you got for me today, Karma.
“Well,” Sam says cheerfully. “Guess we’re walking.”
“Walking where?” Dean coughs into his fist.
“To the curandera- the lady who will fix this curse for you.”
“Oh.”
Dean’s halfway down the street before he hears Sam calling him back, jingling the kidnapped car keys in his hand, and for half a second Sam thinks that he’s just going to keep walking, from sheer stubbornness.
Sam pulls up next to the curb instead of making his brother walk all the way back.
“Bitch,” is the first thing Dean says.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “That’s what karma makes of you, huh?”
~~~~~
The curandera has a little shop on a side street downtown. It’s small but cozy, filled with hundreds of packets of ground up leaves, many of which she points out and explains, shoving them into Sam’s hands and having him sniff. They all seem the same to him, but he lets her chatter on as she leads them into the back room.
“So,” she starts out, hands on hips. “I hear you bring me your brother, and you think that someone has put the mal de ojo on him, yes?”
“Verdad,” Sam says. “That’s right.”
Dean’s following behind, coughing softly into his collar.
The curandera pulls up a chair for him, and he sinks down into it. She gives him a perfunctory once-over, and then turns back to Sam.
“So, your brother. He likes his ladies, yes?”
“Yeah, he tries very hard to be sexy.” Sam smirks.
“I don’t try, I succeed!” Dean calls after her retreating back, but she just waves a hand at him. She returns in a few moments with an egg. Both brothers are, for once, speechless. And remain so as the curandera skims the egg over Dean’s body, paying special attention to his stomach and throat. She’s humming off-key as she works, an old song by Boston. They watch closely as she then takes the egg and breaks it into a bowl, and swirls the yolk around.
“It was a woman who cursed you,” she tells Dean. “But not on purpose. You were just… you pleased her much to look at, I think.” She stands up and puts the bowl on the counter, and places her hands on her hips again, seeming satisfied.
“So… I’m cured?” Dean hazards.
“Sí, sí.”
“Do we owe you anything?” Sam asks as she’s leading them back out through the store. She turns around and looks up at him, like she’s seeing through to his mangled soul.
“No,” she replies softly. “You and your brother have already paid, I think.”
~~~~~
And that’s it. For the curse part, anyway. Sam thinks that it’s apt, that Dean didn’t even do anything, and he got cursed.
Now all that’s left is finishing up the original case here, and then they can head on down the endless highway. Put their feet up on the dashboard and pretend like they could keep going forever.
Dean’s down in the hole when Sam starts to say it. Something about the ‘before’ part of the deal. About taking care of himself and living the best that he could, or some other such deathbed bullshit.
“Listen,” Dean tells him quietly, pausing his digging. “Don’t ‘stay gold, Ponyboy’ me.”
“I won’t,” Sam promises.
“What, then? Do you want to hold hands and keep on driving or something?” Dean rams his shovel through the wooden casket, and then heaves it open. He hauls himself out of the grave, and stands next to his brother.
As the flames flicker and they watch them die down in silence, there’s time to think.
More and more lately, Dean’s been wondering, what did it sound like at the end? Was it that atonal beep that persisted, lingered making bloodstains in the air as your coffee puddled on the floor, or was it rainwater sloshing in your ears while you repeated an endless litany of lies that didn’t bring either of you back from the brink? Dean would like to imagine that it’s neither of those things. Not a combination, either- just an ending. A final, real fucking ending. Turn all the pages, burn the book, grind the ashes under your heel and don’t ever look back. He likes to imagine that it’s the complete absence of sound.
Bobby’d told them to get ready, because the war was just starting. Dean remembers reading something once-what was it that Clausewitz had said? Never start a war you hadn’t already won?
Huh. Well, it was just advice after all, no need to follow it. World War II had turned out well, right? Vietnam?
~~~~~
They walk back to the car in silence, too, because if they’d learned anything by now, it was that you didn’t waste time with useless talking.
Driving off into the night, Dean wonders, when was it, that the click of a gun cocking started to sound like a heartbeat? When you stopped measuring in years and started using moments?
When was it exactly, when you learned that the question was never if, but when.