The waitress was already packing her things when Sam re-entered, and Hank was still on his furious tirade.
"I'll have you arrested for this!" he screamed as she pushed past Sam and out the door, her expression blank and uncaring. Sam let her pass, then turned and followed her, walking a short way behind her as she wandered down the street that led to the centre of town. He rounded a corner a few seconds after her and saw her cross the street. He was about to follow when he heard a newly familiar voice float out the open doorway of a shop to his left.
The woman from the restaurant was standing with her husband in a small pharmacy, her burned hand held out gingerly in front of her. Her husband picked up a small paper bag from the counter, which she replaced with three dollar bills and a handful of change. Sam looked back across the street to see Dana the waitress vanishing around another corner and he deliberated for a moment, unsure who was the better lead. His question was answered, however, when the couple walked from the store and the woman turned to her husband.
"I'm sleeping with your brother," she said simply.
For the second time in ten minutes, Sam found himself in the middle of a very loud, very angry situation. He skirted around the couple and strode into the pharmacy, where the girl behind the counter was watching the unfolding drama with interest. As Sam walked in, she dragged her eyes away from the fight and reached out to pick up the coins from the surface in front of her.
"Wait!" Sam called, quickly reaching for his FBI badge. "Don't touch that money."
"Um…why not?" she asked, her hand hovering over the fifty cents in change. Sam felt around the pockets of his jacket for a bag and carefully nudged the coins into it with a pen.
"These coins are part of an ongoing investigation," he said. The girl looked dubious.
"What, did they murder someone?"
"Look-" he started, searching her uniform for a name badge. "Derek," he read, raising a derisive eyebrow. She glanced down to the name pinned to her front with mild interest, as though she hadn't realised it was there.
"Mindy," she corrected.
"Look, Mindy," he said, "The coins are evidence in a classified case. Here," he dropped two of his own quarters on to the counter. "Did you know that woman?"
"Sure, it's Mrs. Barber, from Redwood Street. She-" Mindy suddenly cut herself off, her expression growing smug.
"What was she buying?" This time Mindy didn't reply; she simply held out her hand.
"You're going to need to give me more than a couple of quarters if you want my help."
"I could have you arrested for obstructing a federal investigation," Sam threatened, not in the mood to deal with this.
"But you won't," she said, staring him down with a cold determination that didn't belong on the face of a sixteen or seventeen year old girl. "Cough up, grandpa."
Sam scowled and fished around in his pockets, disgruntled to find that the smallest bill he had was a twenty.
Mindy smirked as she swiped the money from his hand. "She was buying gauze and antiseptic cream for a weird burn on her hand."
"Have you seen any other weird burns on people in town?"
"A couple days ago, a guy named Kyle Langham came in with a burn on his leg like that. Something burned right through his pant pocket," Mindy said, picking up a nail file from the display in front of the cash register and beginning to shape her thumbnail.
"Just, uh…just out of curiosity, has Kyle Langham revealed anything lately? A big secret or…" She just raised her eyebrows and extended her hand again.
"You've got to be kidding," Sam muttered, unfolding another twenty. She slipped it into her pocket and continued.
"Kyle walked in to the police station two days ago and admitted that he killed some girl last year. It was a hit-and-run, people were talking about it for weeks but they never caught the guy responsible. Well, I guess they have now."
"And what about Mrs. Barber and her husband? Were they happy?"
"I dunno. I don't usually ask about their current marital status," she glanced at Sam to see if she was managing to piss him off, but Sam kept his expression neutral. She rolled her eyes and continued, "Mrs. Barber has been pretty quiet lately, but I guess she's kinda messed up if she goes cheating with her brother-in-law. Don't really blame her though, Mr. Barber's brother, Jack, is like, really hot."
"Fascinating," Sam muttered. He thanked her, only half sincerely, as he dropped the bag of coins into his pocket and left, mulling everything over in his mind. The Illinois air was growing cool as night fell, so he walked briskly back to his car and headed for Dean's house. If there was one good thing about Dean's new anti-hunting attitude, it was that Sam wasn't going to have to answer any probing questions about where he had been.
Sam opened the garden gate and approached the front door of Dean and Annabelle's picture-perfect little house, but he was stopped in his tracks by the sound of raised voices coming from inside.
"I'm not stupid, Dean," he heard Annabelle say. "I know something's going on. I saw the way you two stopped talking when I sat back down, not to mention the fact that you apparently haven't spoken to your best friend in a year, let alone even mentioned his name to me. What the hell are you running from?"
"Who says I'm running from anything?"
"Oh, come on. You turned up out of the blue with nothing but a black eye and a couple of shirts and started a whole new life out in the middle of nowhere, away from your home, your brother and your friends. No one does that for the hell of it."
"What's so wrong with wanting a new life?" Dean asked.
"It means there was something wrong with your old one, and you won't tell me what!"
"Well maybe it's none of your damn business!" Dean snapped. There was silence, then a sigh. "I'm just trying to protect you, Anna. There are parts of my life I'm trying really hard to leave behind. It's for the best. For everyone; trust me."
Sam crept back to his car as quietly as he could, then made quite a show of slamming the car door, rattling the bolt on the gate and ringing the doorbell, hoping they wouldn't realise how long he'd been listening.
When Annabelle answered the door there was a bright smile on her face, the only thing betraying their fight a slight flush in her cheeks.
"Hey, Sam," she welcomed, "come on in."
The rest of the evening passed in amicable conversation, each of them doing a good job at pretending they weren't furious at someone else in the room. By the time the clock on the wall struck eleven, Annabelle was ready for bed, as she had an early shift at the hospital the next morning. She kissed Dean goodnight and left the brothers alone. They both fell silent, no longer having to continue the pleasant façade for Annabelle's sake.
"Listen, Dean-" Sam began.
"Don't start, Sam. There's nothing you can say to make me change my mind about hunting."
"Oh, come on, you can't be happy like this."
"You mean living in a nice house with a girlfriend and a steady job? Yeah, you're right, I'm practically living in poverty." They fell silent again, both of them staring angrily at the television.
"Cas is fine, by the way. Not that you bothered to ask," Sam said.
"Good," Dean said, hollowly.
"Things are settling down in Heaven. He goes back there a lot. He doesn't spend as much time on Earth anymore."
"Fine."
"He's not the same without you."
"Damn it, Sammy, I don't give a shit." Dean slammed his beer bottle down on the table, but before either of them could say another word, they were stopped short by the sound of Annabelle walking across the hall upstairs.
"I've got some reports to write for work," Dean said quietly, his head turned slightly away from his brother. "You okay to entertain yourself for a bit?"
"Sure," Sam said and Dean rose, striding into the study and closing the door swiftly behind him without another glance. Sam glared at the door as though he could break it down with nothing but mind-power and frustration, but when that didn't work, he switched off the television and went to channel his exasperation in to something more productive.
He set up his laptop at the circular kitchen table, carefully laying the coins out in front of him, not daring to touch them with his bare skin, and hoping that one of the two nickels Mrs. Barber had spent in the pharmacy was the same one that had burnt her hand. Sam began researching, but all he had to go on were the burns and people suddenly blurting out life-altering secrets. His internet search provided very little and he wished he could have the bunker's extensive library at his disposal.
After nearly two hours, he found some information on a curse that compels the victim to reveal their deepest secrets to whoever is closest to them at the time. He didn't know if it was even relevant, but it was his only lead. Sam wrote down all the information from the website, not daring to print any of it off in case Dean caught him working a case in his house.
By 1am, Sam was convinced that Dean was waiting for him to go to bed so he could emerge from his study without having to talk to his brother, but more out of pettiness than anything else, Sam decided he wasn't going to let Dean off that easily. Everything was silent from within the study, so Sam stood, stretched, and went to the bathroom, leaving his work spread out across the table.
He emerged from the bathroom a minute later, sniffing the rose scented handwash that had left a strong floral odour on his hands and struggling to imagine his brother wandering around the house smelling of flowers instead of motor oil. He noticed the study door was ajar, and a split second later he heard a muffled cry of pain from the kitchen.
"Dean?" Sam rushed through to the kitchen to find Dean clutching his hand, which was now sporting a familiar red welt.
"Is this what I think it is?" Dean asked furiously, gesturing to the nickel on the floor.
"Well...yeah."
"What the hell do you think you're doing bringing it into my house?" he yelled. "Are you out of your freaking mind?" Glancing towards the ceiling, remembering Annabelle was upstairs and lowered his voice. "I told you, I am finished with that life. What gives you the right-"
"Look, Dean, just chill-"
"Chill? I tell you that I want nothing to do with hunting, and the first thing you do is bring a cursed object into my house? Get the hell out, and take your stupid coins with you!"
Dean tried to push the nickel in to Sam's hands, but Sam leapt back before he could.
"Dean, you don't want to do that."
"Why the hell not?"
"You saw what happened to the waitress in the restaurant, and the same thing happened to the woman who burned her hand. Once you're branded, you're cursed. As soon as you give that coin away you're going to say something you don't want to say."
"Oh yeah, like what?"
"I don't know. Dana lost her job and Mrs. Barber destroyed her marriage. Some kid landed himself in prison. Who knows what you might say." Dean backed down at last, sitting on one of the kitchen chairs, rolling the coin between his fingers and eyeing it pensively. Sam stood still for a long time, as though Dean might start yelling again if he so much as twitched. But at long last Dean spoke, and his voice was quite calm.
"Okay, worst case scenario is Annabelle finds out about hunting and monsters and all that crap. Then my life here is pretty much screwed."
"That's your worst case scenario?" Sam asked incredulously. "Dean, you keep so many secrets, there are a hundred other things you might reveal."
"Like what?"
"How should I know?" Sam asked. "You've always kept things bottled up; hell, you might not even know what your darkest secret is because you spend so much time stuffing your feelings down and denying they exist at all. All I know is, you've been acting really weird with me for a long time, even more so with Cas. Dean rolled his eyes but Sam continued. "There are things you're not telling me, but if you give away that coin it's all going to come spilling out."
"This must be a dream come true for you," Dean muttered. "You've always wanted me to bare my soul to you, so it looks like you're gonna get what you want."
"That's not true," Sam said, sitting down to look his brother in the eye. "Everyone has secrets, Dean, and you should get to decide if and when you tell them." Dean just nodded, rubbing his forehead. "For what it's worth, Dean, I'm sorry. I've been so caught up in the thrill of hunting that I'd forgotten how tough it could be. I should never have tried to force you back into it; or brought a case into your house."
"Thanks," Dean muttered, running his thumb in circles around the burn on his palm.
"But I'm going to work this case," Sam continued, "especially now that I've got you wrapped up in it. I'll find a motel in the morning and I'll fix this."
"Thanks," Dean said again, but this time he seemed to mean it, looking up at his brother and nodding. "Come and see me before you leave town, okay?"
"Of course," Sam agreed. Dean stood, slipped the coin into his pocket, and headed to his bedroom. Sam watched him go, feeling a pit of disappointment and guilt in his stomach, weighing his insides down. He scooped up his laptop and left the kitchen, following his brother up the stairs and finding the guest bedroom with ease, but rather than going to sleep, he opened up his laptop again and continued to work. His research was interrupted every so often by thoughts of Dean, and what exactly he was so keen to keep hidden from Annabelle. And why, after six years, he was suddenly so touchy about Cas.