The Bar at the End of the Universe

[OOM: Prelude to a beer run, immediately previous.]

Sam Winchester appears to come in first.

Bobby Singer comes in, and closes the door.

If this sounds deliberate, it is. Bobby's had time to think about it, between Dean's phone call and Sam's arrival on his doorstep. He knows that coming in to try and take out a demon is against the rules -- outside business.

But he also knows who and what he is: he's the guy other hunters come to, if they feel like talking. Or if they need some information. Take him out and you take out a place kind of like Harvelle's -- an institution, almost. Almost. He's not that into himself.

And hell, for all he knows, this might be personal.

The point is: that demon went in Sam without Sam's permission. Bobby'd stake his life on that. And now the demon is controlling Sam, who's also known in these parts. And that demon is going to try to kill him.

It'll be enough to try to get himself off on self-defense, if he gets caught. If he plays it right. And if he does play it right, he'll buy Dean some time to get to Sioux Falls from Duluth without breaking his damn neck.

Bobby looks up at Sam, and jerks his thumb in the direction of some booths over by the wall. "You want to have a sit? Catch up some?"




[Plotlocked, please. :) ]

All Bobby wanted to do was come in for a six-pack so he didn't have to go out for one. He's got his own idea of what he needs to be doing -- there's a sheaf of papers ripped out of a book to translate and send down to Cheyenne to be pieced back together, and there's his battered old copy of The Milagro Beanfield War to reread for the fifth time -- but apparently the bar has other ideas.

"Yeah?" Bobby asks the bar. "What's in it for me?"

A note appears.

Bobby smiles.




Shortly thereafter, he slings a towel over his shoulder behind the bar, and chalks something up on the board in very precise handwriting:

SPECIALS

MOONSHINE MADE FROM A CACTUS

I DIDN'T ASK WHAT KIND OF CACTUS AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU

AND IF YOU GO BLIND IT'S NOT MY FAULT; CAVEAT EMPTOR

Looks like happy hour is open.

[Open until ten Mountain time! Threadhop! Try the moonshine!

And for the record: there is no known liquor made from the cactus.]

[ETA: The witching hour has happened! All threads are slowtimed. Thank you for tagging in! And good god, what is WRONG with you people that you would subject all your characters to CACTUS MOONSHINE. *laughing*]

[OOM: In which Malcolm Reynolds educates Bobby Singer about space whores.]

Yeah. It's a problem.

He's made it decades without it, mind -- but seeing Sam Winchester with that thing that looks like a chrome file folder on speed, and seeing Sam use it, is enough to get him thinking.

If you can password-protect the shit out of what you're working on -- and that's possible, he knows, he just doesn't know how yet -- it's maybe going to be smarter to take some kind of computer with you on the road, and not take every book you own while you keep trying to figure who's got the information you might need if you're somewhere down in New Mexico and your library's back up in Sioux Falls and there's some weird god-knows-what going after some kid and you maybe had one too many to drink last night and you just can't make the damned connection.

Yeah. Maybe there's something to this laptop thing. And it'd be nice to have digital backups of some of his harder-to-find books.

That's why Bobby's got a Sunday edition of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader under his arm when he finds himself in the bar. After a moment's pause -- it's a bar -- he shrugs a little, gets a beer, settles down in a booth, pulls his cap down a little, and starts pulling out the advertising circulars for Best Buy and Circuit City.

The idea was to check out the back shed for a tarp to put over the Impala (or what's left of it); somehow it turned into a beer and a meatball sandwich.

Both the drink and the sandwich are behind him now; Bobby's on Coors number two, over in a booth. It's five o'clock somewhere -- and he's stopping after this one, too, considering he's what passes for the local point man.

Bad fucking day.

[Early in the morning: Lawrence, Kansas.

A little later in the morning: Sioux Falls and environs.]



[Warnings for mention of trauma and related images.]

Bobby doesn't look up when the door swings open -- he just pushes it on past, eyes on the huge book open in one hand, palm cradling the spine, thumb and fingers supporting each side.

Click, goes the door behind him. And as soon as it closes, Bobby looks up.

(Peripheral vision: what's around him is not the shed, and the locked cabinet with the book he's looking for. It's a damned bar.)

His eyes narrow.

The noise the book makes as it closes isn't quite as sharp as the click the front door made -- but it's still sharp. Bobby tucks the book under his arm, and heads for the bar. Only one way to figure out how the hell a bar turned up in his back shed, and that's by getting some information.