Outside "The Shoppe Of Magick", three hours later

"This is it," Jared said. He moved to open the passenger side door.

"Wait wait wait wait," Jensen grabbed him back. He indicated his "Civilian Dean" outfit and Jared's equivalent outfit. "We're just going in? Like this?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, shouldn't we be in disguise or something?"

Jared frowned. He held up a scrap of paper. "Jensen," he said patiently, "we're shopping. Not convincing some stereotypically hick Sheriff to give us access to a crime scene or some unfeasibly hot pathologist to let us help her with an autopsy. We're in there to buy this…" he waved the piece of paper, "crap, then we're done."

Jensen made a face.

"What?" Jared asked, losing patience.

"It's just…that's it? That's the episode? Sam and Dean go shopping for a spell, The End?"

"It's Season Six. Who even cares?"

The Impala chose that moment to emit another unexplainable noise from underneath its hood. Jensen gave Jared a triumphant look.

Jared sighed.

Inside "The Shoppe of Magick", five minutes later

Benjamin Latour could recall exactly when his enthusiasm for the whole magical supplies business had waned.

In college, as he'd smoked up a storm and spent most of his time more baked than Mary Berry's brunch menu, he'd hit upon the wondrous notion of opening his own magic shop. It would be a good cover for importing a shit-ton of ingredients for some truly epic mind-altering substances, it was mysterious (and chicks dug mysterious) and he'd probably find himself dealing primarily with harmless hippies and hipsters instead of the huge sweaty-toed women that had populated his teenage years as he'd helped his Dad out with his shoe shop on Main Street.

And then, about three months after The Shoppe of Magick had opened, and was doing fairly decent business in much the way he had imagined, some bemulleted asshat had walked in and asked him did he stock dead man's blood.

In short order, Ben had discovered to his horror that magic was real, monsters were real, and worst of all, mankind's primary defence against the things that went bump in the night seemed to be the crowd scene in the background of every episode of Dukes of Hazzard.

Ding ding ding.

He remembered the days when the bell above his door had been a whimsical addition. Nowadays, it heralded a closed fist of dread in his stomach. Reaching under the counter for the silver-tipped, holy-water coated machete he kept there, he took in the sight of the two rather large gentlemen entering the shop, each clad in a smart suit and tie combo.

"Hey," he offered, keeping his tone as nonchalant and bored as possible. Some of the monsters left you alone if you did the same. He'd learned that, too.

Jared and Jensen exchanged a look. Each seemed to be waiting for the other to speak. Ben watched as the big one motioned frantically to the smaller one.

"Mime artist supply shop's across the street, guys," he said. "Doing a special this week on big panes of glass. Everything comes box-wrapped free too."

The little one laughed, a little too loudly and for too long. The bigger one joined in. "Regular comedian here! Er. Okay. Let's do this," said the smaller one, and he took a deep breath. As Ben watched, his fingers tightening around the blade, the man's facial expression changed, grew intently serious. He squared his shoulders, stood straighter, seemed to grow half an inch. When he spoke, his voice was about three octaves lower.

"Ben, right? Got your address from Bobby Singer. I'm Dean Winchester, and this is my brother Sam."

With his free hand, Ben took a bite out of the sandwich he'd been chewing on when these two entered. His eyes never left Dean, who was now standing there looking expectantly at Sam. As though his eyes were on wheels, Ben slowly dragged his gaze over to the really tall one. It was obvious he was trying to undergo the same physical transformation as Dean, but he seemed to be having difficulty. Either that, or he was really, really constipated.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Sam Winchester, and this is Dean."

"Oh for God's sake!" Dean exploded. "He knows that! I already did that bit!"

Sam closed his eyes and grimaced in embarrassment. "Right, right. Sorry, sorry. Okay. Um. Can we go again?"

"Let's go again," Dean agreed.

Watching all of this, saying nothing, Ben kept right on chewing his sandwich.

Dean went through the same physical tics as before. Exactly the same, in fact; the squaring shoulders, the standing straighter, the slight disapproving frown. "Ben, right?" he said. "Got your address from Bobby Singer. I'm Dean Winchester, and this is my brother Sam."

As before, Ben's eyes moved to Sam, who was nodding intently, as though he were watching a Presidential debate. "Good to meet you," Sam intoned. He looked at Dean with a 'how was that?' expression, and got a thumbs-up in response. Sam grinned.

"We have-" and Dean coughed suddenly, holding up a hand, "-I'm sorry, I got something in my throat there, a little dust or something. It's fine, it's fine. Okay, let's try that again?"

"Sure," Sam nodded.

"We have a list of ingredients for a spell that uh…" he floundered for a second, "…it's a spell that we need to cast to…" and suddenly, inspiration seemed to strike and he fixed Ben with one of the most heroic expressions Ben had ever seen, "put some evil sons-o'-bitches in the ground."

"Oh, that's great!" Sam said admiringly.

"So what do you-" Dean was going on, but he got no further, because the holy water tossed by Ben hit him square in the face at that moment. Sam got the same treatment a heartbeat later; though he had time to prepare, he seemed resigned to just standing there and letting it wash over him.

"We're not-" Sam began, and then he too stopped because he'd just caught an object Ben had lobbed in his direction. "Silver locket?" Sam guessed, turning it over in his hands. He saw Dean was now holding something similar.

"Hmm. Not vampires, or werewolves, or ghouls, or possessed…just the drugs then, huh? Well," Ben grunted, "who am I to judge? Whatever gets you Hunters through the day, right?"

Dean was standing there, dripping wet. "Towel?" he said.

Ben looked left and right at the otherwise empty shop. "See anyone standing around with one?" he asked, and without waiting for an answer he snatched the list off Dean's still-outstretched hand. "Hmm. I can help you with most of this. Can't help you with the powdered vampire fang, though. One of your charming Hunter amigos cleaned me out of my stock two days ago for some ritual, and I won't get more for a couple weeks."

"Anywhere else in town we might be able to grab some?" Sam asked.

Ben narrowed his eyes. "Are there any other magical supply shops in Harrisburg, South Dakota, population 4,000?" he intoned robotically. "Oh yeah, tons! There's The Magic Box over on 5th. Then there's Demons, Demons, Demons on Madison and Culver. And of course you got Wiz-E-Mart outside town but they're real impersonal."

Sam was fishing out a notebook from an inside pocket. "Okay whoa, slow down. What was the middle one?"

For a long moment Ben simply stared at him. "I lied," he said, as though talking to a moron. "None of those stores exist. Now, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to sell you what I can for a frankly criminal mark-up because I find you both intensely irritating. Then you're going to leave my store and ask Bobby Singer to lose my number. I mean, I'd heard of you guys: The Winchesters, the guys who stopped the Apocalypse. The hell happened to you?"

"Long drive," Sam offered.

As Ben started to bag up the ingredients on the list, Jared escorted Jensen safely out of earshot. "Worst. Audition. Ever."

"I know," Jensen hissed. "You'd think with a hundred and change episodes behind me I could improvise some damn dialogue. Think we could persuade Balthazar and Crowley to send us a writer?"

"No I don't," Jared replied, "and that's not our biggest problem. We need fresh vampire fang and we need it fast. Where the hell are we gonna find it?"

"On a vampire?"

Jared looked at him as though he had lost his mind. "An actual live vampire?" he echoed. "What do you suggest we do when we find one, Jensen? Act it to death? And how are we gonna locate one anyway?"

Jensen indicated the shopkeeper. "Maybe Comic Book Guy over there knows."

Jared snorted. "Well, I don't think he likes us very much."

"Oh yeah?" Jensen replied. "Well, you know something? Dean Winchester doesn't care."

He did the transformation thing again that he'd done shortly after they'd walked into the shop, but this time it was subtly different; this time it seemed entirely effortless, as though he'd suddenly slipped on the world's most comfortable pair of shoes.

As Jared watched, Dean Winchester strode across the shop and grabbed the luckless shopkeeper by the scruff of the neck, pressing him backward against the nearest hard surface.

"Listen to me, chuckles," Dean said, "my little brother and I got hit pretty hard by a Djinn's whammy yesterday before we ganked the sonuvabitch. We're still shaking it off. Y'know, when we Hunters are out saving civilians asses – civilians like you – it can take a toll. You get that, right? Smart guy like you?"

"I-I-I get that," Ben nodded frantically.

"So here's how it's gonna go, my man. We're gonna enjoy a significant discount on these supplies, and you're gonna point us in the direction of the nearest vamp nest so we can go clean house on those pointy-toothed scumbags and go on making the world a safer place for small businessmen like yourself. Frosty?"

Ben looked as though he were about to pass out. "I-I don't know anything about any nest. But a few days ago a guy turned up dead in the park. Had all the hallmarks of a vamp attack. Maybe ask the local sheriff, pull off some of that pretend FBI stuff you Hunters do?"

Dean let the smaller man go, slowly and deliberately. He picked up the bag of supplies Ben had dropped on the counter, tossed a few cursory dollar bills in his direction, nodded to Sam, and both men walked out of the shop with a palpable swagger. Just before they were due to exit, Dean turned to Ben.

"Pretending," he said, "is our speciality."

Ding ding ding. The door closed.

"Dick," Ben muttered, as he turned away from the window to fix himself a nice calming smoke.

Had he turned at that exact moment, he would have witnessed the rather strange sight of two men in suits jumping up and down outside his shop whilst high-fiving each other.