milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Dean's changing the oil on the Impala. Sam should be in the motel room, working on gathering more background information for their next case.

He can't make himself sit still long enough to focus.

After the sixth circuit of the room, he throws his hands in the air and stalks through the door to Milliways instead.

At least there he can grab better coffee than the cheap vending machine crap, right?

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"Fine by me."

He sets his own drink on a nearby table and walks over to choose a cue.

Boyd arranges the nine balls in the triangle one-handed.

"Now, I'd be hurt if you take this the wrong way," he says, casual, "but you're the first I've met here rings anything remotely close to like me."

"How so?"

Matter-of-factly asked, and Sam doesn't seem bothered by Boyd's observation. He tests the cue's weight, rolls it on the table to make sure it's not warped, then picks it back up and glances over at the other man.

Boyd's in the process of selecting himself a cue. "You understand the way to read things, when you're talking man to man, like adults. Others, they didn't."

"Well, you get all kinds in here."

Sam chalks the tip of his cue, then moves to the end of the table to study the lay of it.

"It's sure not much like any other bar I've ever seen, I'll give you that."

"Only corpses I've ever seen in a bar -- " That he'll admit to. " -- went in well aware of needing to be able to stagger into work at the appropriate hour the next day."

Boyd stands to the side, speaks to the table.

"None of this necessity of considering religious questions on a day ain't Sunday."

"I've seen more than a few of those myself."

He leans over the table, sets the cue--

--CRACK--

-- and studies the break.

"I guess anyone spends time in a bar sees their fair share." Boyd eyes the table and circles; the green stripe is an easy shot. Lining it up: "Trick's not to be one."

"Always a good start," he agrees, watching.

Sam holds his silence while Boyd takes his shot, then adds,

"I'd venture a guess that a lot of the people here don't exactly have all that much experience with bars of the kind it sounds like we both know."

Yellow stripe's a little trickier.

He glances up at Sam before he lines it up.

"If you had to venture a guess," casual, "what kind of bars would you say those are?"

Sam eyes him for a second, then shrugs.

"More roadhouse than not, for one."

Boyd takes his shot, misses, grimaces, wheels away to pick up his glass.

(The grimace might have more to do with the bullet wound in his shoulder than genuine irritation at missing.)

"Now, that's a word we don't have in our parlance except as it comes from the outside. Easy Rider and all."

And at the end of Easy Rider, it's the hillbillies who blew up Peter Fonda and fucked up Dennis Hopper.

Boyd's well aware of that.

"Knew a place in Nebraska named that. Seemed to fit."

Before it was burned to the ground, anyway.

Sam sinks the green six in the side pocket, then lines up a second shot on the bright red three toward the far corner.

"What would you call them?"

"Bars," Boyd says, watching the table. "Pool halls. Older folks might call them honky tonks."

"Fair enough."

He takes his shot, watches the ball ricochet off the bank and spin away, then steps back for Boyd to take his turn.

"Been in some places that could be called any or all of the three."

"A traveling man," Boyd says, lining up his shot.

"Yep," Sam confirms. "The business keeps us on the road most of the time."

Boyd shoots; in goes a stripe.

"And what would happen," he says, lining up another shot, "if someone were to inquire as to the nature of that business?"

"Depends on who's asking," he replies, with a quick grin.

It's absolutely true, as it turns out.

"Are you?"

Another shot, another pocket, Boyd lines up a third.

"Only if it should not offend."

"No reason it should."

And since given the entire conversation about the dead, the guy's clearly not likely to buy the truth of what it is they do --

"We're private investigators."

Boyd misses his third and retreats to his glass.

"The kind for hire?"

"Pretty much. We don't work for the cops, or anything like that. More... independent clients, you could say."

Although they impersonate them from time to time.

Sam sinks the recalcitrant three and lines up his own next shot.

"What about you?"

"Currently unemployed."

Boyd's watching the table.

"Coal mine's hiring. Not a lot of other options."

He nods, and shoots again, then moves for a third.

"West Virginia?"