A/N: Hello, everybody! Please note that this fic contains some swearing and brief violence, but nothing too bad. Hope you enjoy!

If you asked him about it later, Dean would say it was all Sam's fault.

After all, it had been Sam who had gotten the idea to try to map out the Bunker in all of its long-abandoned, secret-clubhouse glory. It had been Sam who had insisted on making a way through every locked door, whether by lockpicking or by more forceful means.

He'd babbled on for a while about how incredibly valuable the information in the rooms could be-he wasn't wrong, but wow, what a geek-and gone on a librarian kick, sorting through each room and making a quick inventory of its contents before moving on to the next. (It was a good project for him, since Dean had been basically benching him-or trying to-since the Trials had started, even though he wasn't feeling that bad. Yet. Dean would take anything that took Sam's mind off trying to hunt and kept him busy inside.) He'd do a thorough cataloguing session later-at the moment he was just trying to work out where things were, in general, and where the things were that were likely to kill them.

The fourth room on the second floor contained nothing that was likely to kill them, assuming they continued at Winchester-average levels of stupidity.

It did, however, nearly bury them in an avalanche of semi-sparkly pink crystals.

What the fuck?

"What the fuck?" sputtered Dean as he regained his footing. "What is this?"

Sam looked just as confused. "I have an idea," he said, "but to test it I'd need to put one in my mouth, and I really don't want to be wrong."

Without stopping to think, Dean picked up a crystal and put it in his mouth.

"It tastes...salty?" he said. "Really salty."

Sam shot Dean an annoyed look. "It's Himalayan salt. And you didn't need to do that."

"I'm hearing fancy salt, problem solved," said Dean, still sucking on the crystal.

Sam decided to let the matter drop. "Okay, so why would the Men of Letters have a gigantic stash of fancy salt?"

"Maybe it's really good at fighting demons or ghosts or something?" suggested Dean.

"Would it even work against ghosts and demons, though?" Sam mused. "I mean, salt repels supernatural evil because of its purity, and it only works in pure form. You can make your food as salty as you want and you're not going to poison a demon who eats it. Himalayan salt is pink because it has a bunch of minerals in it-so would it work?"

"The Men of Letters must have thought it was good for something," Dean replied.

"Maybe they wrote about it somewhere," said Sam.

...

Thus commenced a search through the Men of Letters literature for any mention of Himalayan salt, unusual salt, pink salt, or anything along those lines. Luckily, it didn't take too long.

"Okay," said Dean, "It says here that Himalayan salt is useful in spells for detecting someone's intentions. It seems to be a pretty fundamental part of the Bunker's defenses-okay, this place is even cooler than I thought."

"That makes sense," said Sam. "Salt of the earth."

"And it has all the same uses as regular salt, so there's that question answered," Dean continued.

They cleaned up the hallway, Sam marked off the salt room on his map, and they let the matter drop.

...

Except Dean didn't want to let the matter drop.

He'd snatched several handfuls of the stuff while they'd been cleaning the hallway-just to see what he could do with it, okay? Not because it was pretty or anything-tucked them into his jacket pockets, and carried them back to his room (his own room!) to examine more closely.

Normally, Dean wasn't a fan of spellwork. He friggin' hated witches, and casting spells seemed too close to that world for comfort. But he knew sometimes there was no other option, and he was well aware (or at least aware of the depth of his lack of awareness) of the amount of spellwork that had gone into the Bunker. In general, if spells were saving his (or Sam's) bacon, he wasn't complaining.

And a spell to detect people's intentions? That could be really friggin' useful.

Now that he thought about it, it would probably be good to get Sam in the loop on this as soon as possible, because if Sam found out he'd been working on an intention-detecting spell without him-well, it probably wouldn't go over too well.

Not to mention the fact that Sam's skills at detecting people's intentions could really do with a boost.

Yeah, it'd be good to let him know about this.

...

The spell, of course, turned out to involve a bunch of arcane ingredients that they really had no time to go digging around for. If they hadn't been busy, they might have gone for it, but when were they ever not busy? They'd been in a bit of a lull recently-hence the mapping-but what with the Trials just getting started, it couldn't last. So there went that idea.

Dean had another.

On a hunt that Sam had (loudly) insisted on coming along on, he got a chance to test it.

It was supposed to be a milk run.

Then the demons showed up.

"Well, look at that," said one of the demons, "we've got ourselves a Winchester."

Winchester, singular. So they didn't know Sam was here. Good. There were three of them, and they had Dean pinned to the wall with mojo as they gleefully monologued about how famous they were going to be for taking down a Winchester. Over the heads of the demons, Dean could see Sam sneaking up behind them with the knife in hand, but the pressure on his throat was getting really intense and he had to do something. He didn't know how much time this would buy him, or if it would even work at all, but it was worth a shot. Assuming he could move his arm.

With great effort, Dean reached into his jacket pocket, retrieved a handful of Himalayan salt, and flung it at the demons.

Instantly, he felt the pressure release and stumbled off the wall.

The demons were reacting like they'd been hit with holy water. They shrieked and cursed, and Dean grinned.

Then the first of them lit up red as the tip of the knife protruded from his chest.

It was a quick fight, and Dean couldn't do much but watch as Sam killed a second demon. The third flung Sam away with mojo, but he managed to throw the knife to Dean, who stabbed her before she could turn around.

It took Sam a little longer than normal to get up, but he did, and made his way over to Dean.

He looked at Dean, then at the ground, then back at Dean.

"Did you just throw Himalayan salt at them?" He was speaking with pauses to catch his breath, which set Dean on high alert, but he couldn't help but take pride in his idea.

"Yeah," he said. "Worked great, didn't it?"

"So you were just... carrying that stuff around in your pockets?" asked Sam in a somewhat dubious tone.

"Yeah," said Dean, slightly defensive. "In case we ran into any demons. I wanted to see if that would work. It's a good thing I was."

"That I'm not denying," Sam replied.

For a moment, there was quiet.

Then, Sam spoke up.

"Why," he asked, "didn't we think of this sooner?"

Dean opened his mouth, as if to say something. Then, he closed it and shrugged.

They went home.

...

Honestly, Dean was kind of glad the salt was good for something. It gave him an excuse to keep it around.

It looked nice, okay? The crystals weren't just pink, they were a bunch of different shades when you looked at them closely. They were jagged and rough-looking, but shone when the light hit them just right.

Sometimes, he would take one out of his pocket and just look at it for a little bit-never too long, and never where Sam could see. Really, it wasn't so bad. He could use a little nice in his life.

Nice was getting a house to live in and a room all to himself. Nice was Sam getting to be the geeky librarian he'd always wanted to be (even if he was getting sicker and-nope, shutting down that train of thought). Sometimes nice was a bunch of pink crystals that happened to fight demons.

It would have to be enough.

A/N: Hello again! Thank you so much for reading! Leave me a review if you liked it?