bratfarrar

No matter what Sam claims to the contrary, Dean was not moping around the bunker. Cas and Crowley were on the trail of Lucifer, Dean had gotten to kill Hitler, they'd sort of made up with Mom, and it was always great to visit with Jody, despite the close call or two. So he definitely wasn't moping--just ... sort of at loose ends, especially after the third week in a row without so much as a sniff of a hunt. He'd taken apart and reassembled the bunker's dryer when it started auditioning for the role of Chris Slade, but that only took him a couple of days, and there's only so many times you can wash and wax even a beauty like his Baby without giving her some air in between.

So when Sam finally came up with a report of multiple people claiming abduction and Disney Princess-flavored hallucinogens, of course Dean jumped on it, even though evidence of actual supernatural activity was pretty thin. Not even Sam reciting statistics about prior mundane abduction cases in the area made much of an impression. Dean wanted a witch to throwdown with, and he got one.

It wasn't much of a throwdown, though--she had enough mojo to get her jollies off by treating her neighbors like Barbie and Ken dolls, but since Sam and Dean had the forethought to stick a couple of hex bags in their pockets, she was reduced to running at them with a steak knife, and that was the end of that.

No, the problem came after, when they were picking through her belongings to make sure there weren't any unpleasant surprises for whoever finally found the body. There wasn't much, though: some decent spell ingredients, a very fancy but poorly-sharpened ceremonial knife, and a pile of fairy tale books from the local library. Sam, being an upstanding boy scout, said they ought to return them, picked them up, and disappeared before Dean had the chance to so much as say 'boo'.

And Dean, because he's a dumb idiot when it comes to Sam getting messed with, grabbed after the books when they dropped--and found himself in a painful heap at the bottom of a flight of stone stairs, having apparently stepped on the hem of his princely royal cape, surrounded by overly-helpful servants who insisted his name was actually Reginald.

"That's quite a story, chief," Benny says at the end of it. They're both eating slightly-underripe apples, which Benny had produced from somewhere when Dean wasn't looking. Maybe this is a world in which the only food available is magically-appearing apples.

The horse keeps trying to steal Dean's. It's very good at looming.

"Yeah, I know," Dean signs, and gives into the inevitable--the horse's lips are surprisingly soft as it plucks the apple out of his hand. "And you don't believe a word of it."

"Well now, I didn't say that." Benny stands up, dusts himself off. He also looks a bit loomy from where Dean's sitting. "I've heard stranger stories that've turned out to be true." That sounds halfway promising--maybe Dean's going to get a sidekick on this gig after all. "This brother of yours--you think he's west of here?"

"West of where we were when I got clobbered by your buddy, yeah." Dean has to crane his neck a bit to see Benny's face properly--something's going on there, but he's a hard man to read sometimes. Well, vampire. Bandit? Whatever he is at the moment.

"Let me think on it," Benny says, and "Don't try anything stupid while I'm gone," and Dean's going to ask where he's going, but then one of the other bandits shows up--still picking dinner out of his teeth, so at least they're probably not vampires--and Benny heads off to take his place by the fire.

"Hey there, big guy," Dean says, but the replacement guard just sort of grunts at him before settling down a couple trees further, just out of easy talking range. "Great," Dean sighs, and drops his head back against the tree that's propping him up. The horse takes this as a cue to come over and stick its head in his lap, like it thinks he's hiding more apples. "Just great."