Lost/SPN Fic: there must be some kind of way out of here (ensemble)
Title: there must be some kind of way out of here
Fandom: SPN/Lost
Characters: Ensemble (Jo, Ash, Jimmy, Bela, Castiel, Miles, Boone, David)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1,587
Disclaimer: Not mine. Title from “All Along the Watchtower”.
Summary: Five people walk into a bar.
A/N: Written for joyyjpg who requested a Lost/SPN crossover with the prompt “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.” I must admit this sucker was heavily influenced by “Hotel California.” Happy Halloween, my dear! <3
One
There’s a bar in heaven.
Thank fucking God, for that.
Miles can already taste the phantom burn of whiskey on his tongue as he pushes the door of the Roadhouse open. He hasn’t needed a drink this bad in---he pauses to think. Years? Decades? Who knows anymore? All he knows for sure is he’s got a dime-store badge in his pocket and two lifetimes worth of bullshit rattling around in his brain.
He plops down at the first barstool and taps the counter. A pretty young thing with blond hair arches her eyebrows at him.
“Whiskey,” he says. “Don’t bother with a glass.”
“Bad day?” she asks, passing him the bottle. Miles takes a long drink, it doesn’t cut the edge the way it should.
The girl smiles at him sympathetically.
“You know you can’t get drunk here, right?”
“I do now,” he mutters.
She laughs, extends a hand.
“I’m Jo.”
“Miles.”
They shake and Miles can’t help but notice her grip is stronger than his. She lets go of his hand and leans against the counter, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“You’re trying to find a way out, aren’t you?”
Miles smirks.
“You’re not?”
“We’ve been getting a lot of your type in here. The new regime’s fucked everything up. Nobody seems happy in their little corner of the afterlife anymore.”
“That’s not what I asked you,” Miles points out.
Jo takes his bottle and turns it up, barely grimacing at the burn. She slams it back down on the bar.
“There’s no way out of here,” she says.
Two
Jimmy stumbles into the bar and collapses on the floor before he has a chance to breathe a word. He’s been running through memories for so long, through Christmases and anniversaries, through so many wasted hours spent in church services, he’s seen so many versions of his wife and daughter he can’t remember what they looked like the last time he saw them anymore.
Then he escaped, found a way out of the loop only to end up---
“Where am I?” he mutters.
The girl stares down at him in surprise.
“Castiel?”
Jimmy recoils.
“You know that bastard?”
“Wait. What?”
“I’m Jimmy. Jimmy Novak. His vessel,” he snarls.
Jo leans down to help him to his feet.
“That must have sucked.”
“You have no idea.”
He lets her pull him to his feet and lead him to a barstool next to a young man nursing a bottle of whiskey.
“I’m Jo,” the girl says as she pours him a drink. “This is Miles.”
“Welcome to the Hotel California, buddy,” Miles says. “I hope you brought plenty of clean underwear.”
Jimmy pushes his glass away.
“I’m not staying.”
Jo and Miles exchange a look.
“Whatever you say, man.”
Three
Boone Carlyle saw the light. And he was going to go in it, no questions asked. It’s supposed to be an awfully big adventure, right? He smiles to himself. Shannon would never let him get away with quoting Peter Pan. But then he looked away. Just for a moment, one backwards glance at the door and poof. They were gone and he was alone. Again.
It’s not fair. Nothing ever is for him. He wanted to be happy, to march off into the sunset with the rest of them. But deep down inside he wasn’t ready to go. Not there, not yet. He wanted more time, here or preferably back down there. Back home.
He walks out of the church into what used to be Los Angeles and finds nothing but road. It reminds him of the summer he spent hitching his way up the coast just to piss his stepdad off.
He walks until he sees the bar with the mullet guy sitting on the front stoop fiddling with an old laptop.
“Hey,” Boone says.
The guy grins up at him.
“Hey yourself,” he says.
“Is this your bar?”
“Nah, she belongs to the ladies Harville. I love her though. My little slice of pie in the sky, if you get my drift.”
Boone tries to hide his confusion with a laugh, but no dice.
“You don’t get my drift. You do know you’re dead, right? Because I hate explaining that part. There’s always crying, things get thrown---I hate the emotional shit. Unless it leads to fuck it all afterlife sex. Not that I’m offering. No offense. I’m Ash, by the way.”
Boone blinks, trying to process the sheer amount of crazy Ash just laid on him.
“I know I’m dead. I got the full flashy montage and everything, but I’m a little fuzzy on what I’m doing here.”
“Were you looking for the exit sign?”
“Maybe…” Boone says guiltily.
Ash claps a reassuring hand on Boone’s shoulder and opens the door.
“Looks like we got ourselves another customer, Jo.”
Four
She’s still got it. That’s Bela’s first thought when she cons her way off the rack. Demons can be bought, hell , everyone can be bought. People come with price tags. Bela knows this as surely as she knows anything. Once she’s off the rack, she bargains her way into a more leisurely circle of hellfire and bides her time until one of those newfangled renegade angels come looking for someone with information on a certain slingshot that can bring giants to their knees.
He threatens her of course, but what’s he going to do? Damn her twice. She gives him the name of the demon she sold the slingshot to back when she was still topside in exchange for a ticket out of the fire and brimstone racket. She lobbies for her life back, but it’s just her luck to get a middle management benefactor. The best offer he can make is to send her upstairs. It’s better than nothing.
Heaven, it turns out, is kind of lame. At least for the moment. Every poor sod she runs into has a sob story about their happily ever after crumbling, leaving them scrambling for something new. Then she finds the Roadhouse.
She saunters into the place like she owns it, completely ignoring the other patrons spread around drinking alcohol that won’t so much as make them tipsy.
“Hello, is anyone running this hellhole?” she calls across the counter.
“They’re out.”
Bela turns to find a not entirely unattractive man with a sly smile leering at her.
“Out where?”
Miles shrugs.
“Out back. We’re all on house arrest here, nobody goes too far. They’ll be back soon. I bet I can help you though.”
“I bet you could, but I’m not in the market for that kind of help today. I need directions.”
“Let me just break out my handy dandy guide to the afterlife. Oh wait…sorry sweetheart, this is the only game in town.”
Bela sighs and heads towards the door. It’s so hard to find helpful people these days. She opens the door and gasps before she can stop herself. There’s nothing there anymore, no road, no world, no anything. She feels a hand on her shoulder.
“See what I mean?”
Five
“Hey,” Jo says softly. “What are you doing back here again, sweetie?”
David shrugs and reaches for the nearest rag. He wipes angrily at the same spot until he can’t stand the feeling of Jo watching him out of the corner of her eye anymore. He stops and stares at the other patrons instead.
There’s Ash. He’s always here. Last time, he taught David how to hack into the FBI database, not that it would do them much good in this place. But it was still cool.
At the pool table in the corner, a pretty woman keeps bending over teasing some short dude who seems to suck at playing pool. Or who’s good at making it seem like he does. Two other guys, one in a trench coat and the other one in a suit for some reason, are dancing with each other slowly by the jukebox. Weird.
David sighs. He knows Jo’s not going to stop staring until he spills his guts.
“My family left. I tried to find them, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even find our stupid house.”
Jo kisses his forehead lightly.
“Screw ‘em. You’ve got us.”
David snorts.
“Yeah, for how long? Until some other sad dead people need an imaginary kid.”
“I don’t know,” Jo says. “But until then…”
“I can stay here,” David says and resumes his wiping.
Jo nods.
“When do you think it’ll be our turn?” David asks.
Jo looks around the bar, at Miles still trying his best to get into Bela’s pants and at Boone clinging to Jimmy because he doesn’t have anything else to cling to. And at Ash, good old Ash, content as ever. Then at little David, thirteen and completely fucked. They’ll never get out of here. Maybe they’ll get their shit sorted out upstairs and everybody will go back to their corners, but it won’t change the fact that they’re all dead. Still, the kid deserves some hope. They all do.
“Soon, sweetie, really soon.”
***
Castiel rubs his eyes wearily. The Roadhouse will have to be dealt with. It saddens him. He knows some of those people. Jimmy, Jo. He owes them so much…but this chaos can not be tolerated. The patrons of the bar will have to go back to their respective corners of Heaven. They’ll have to forget about leaving. Dead is dead.
He makes his way to the door. He’ll have to show them there is no exit.
Fandom: SPN/Lost
Characters: Ensemble (Jo, Ash, Jimmy, Bela, Castiel, Miles, Boone, David)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1,587
Disclaimer: Not mine. Title from “All Along the Watchtower”.
Summary: Five people walk into a bar.
A/N: Written for joyyjpg who requested a Lost/SPN crossover with the prompt “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.” I must admit this sucker was heavily influenced by “Hotel California.” Happy Halloween, my dear! <3
One
There’s a bar in heaven.
Thank fucking God, for that.
Miles can already taste the phantom burn of whiskey on his tongue as he pushes the door of the Roadhouse open. He hasn’t needed a drink this bad in---he pauses to think. Years? Decades? Who knows anymore? All he knows for sure is he’s got a dime-store badge in his pocket and two lifetimes worth of bullshit rattling around in his brain.
He plops down at the first barstool and taps the counter. A pretty young thing with blond hair arches her eyebrows at him.
“Whiskey,” he says. “Don’t bother with a glass.”
“Bad day?” she asks, passing him the bottle. Miles takes a long drink, it doesn’t cut the edge the way it should.
The girl smiles at him sympathetically.
“You know you can’t get drunk here, right?”
“I do now,” he mutters.
She laughs, extends a hand.
“I’m Jo.”
“Miles.”
They shake and Miles can’t help but notice her grip is stronger than his. She lets go of his hand and leans against the counter, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“You’re trying to find a way out, aren’t you?”
Miles smirks.
“You’re not?”
“We’ve been getting a lot of your type in here. The new regime’s fucked everything up. Nobody seems happy in their little corner of the afterlife anymore.”
“That’s not what I asked you,” Miles points out.
Jo takes his bottle and turns it up, barely grimacing at the burn. She slams it back down on the bar.
“There’s no way out of here,” she says.
Two
Jimmy stumbles into the bar and collapses on the floor before he has a chance to breathe a word. He’s been running through memories for so long, through Christmases and anniversaries, through so many wasted hours spent in church services, he’s seen so many versions of his wife and daughter he can’t remember what they looked like the last time he saw them anymore.
Then he escaped, found a way out of the loop only to end up---
“Where am I?” he mutters.
The girl stares down at him in surprise.
“Castiel?”
Jimmy recoils.
“You know that bastard?”
“Wait. What?”
“I’m Jimmy. Jimmy Novak. His vessel,” he snarls.
Jo leans down to help him to his feet.
“That must have sucked.”
“You have no idea.”
He lets her pull him to his feet and lead him to a barstool next to a young man nursing a bottle of whiskey.
“I’m Jo,” the girl says as she pours him a drink. “This is Miles.”
“Welcome to the Hotel California, buddy,” Miles says. “I hope you brought plenty of clean underwear.”
Jimmy pushes his glass away.
“I’m not staying.”
Jo and Miles exchange a look.
“Whatever you say, man.”
Three
Boone Carlyle saw the light. And he was going to go in it, no questions asked. It’s supposed to be an awfully big adventure, right? He smiles to himself. Shannon would never let him get away with quoting Peter Pan. But then he looked away. Just for a moment, one backwards glance at the door and poof. They were gone and he was alone. Again.
It’s not fair. Nothing ever is for him. He wanted to be happy, to march off into the sunset with the rest of them. But deep down inside he wasn’t ready to go. Not there, not yet. He wanted more time, here or preferably back down there. Back home.
He walks out of the church into what used to be Los Angeles and finds nothing but road. It reminds him of the summer he spent hitching his way up the coast just to piss his stepdad off.
He walks until he sees the bar with the mullet guy sitting on the front stoop fiddling with an old laptop.
“Hey,” Boone says.
The guy grins up at him.
“Hey yourself,” he says.
“Is this your bar?”
“Nah, she belongs to the ladies Harville. I love her though. My little slice of pie in the sky, if you get my drift.”
Boone tries to hide his confusion with a laugh, but no dice.
“You don’t get my drift. You do know you’re dead, right? Because I hate explaining that part. There’s always crying, things get thrown---I hate the emotional shit. Unless it leads to fuck it all afterlife sex. Not that I’m offering. No offense. I’m Ash, by the way.”
Boone blinks, trying to process the sheer amount of crazy Ash just laid on him.
“I know I’m dead. I got the full flashy montage and everything, but I’m a little fuzzy on what I’m doing here.”
“Were you looking for the exit sign?”
“Maybe…” Boone says guiltily.
Ash claps a reassuring hand on Boone’s shoulder and opens the door.
“Looks like we got ourselves another customer, Jo.”
Four
She’s still got it. That’s Bela’s first thought when she cons her way off the rack. Demons can be bought, hell , everyone can be bought. People come with price tags. Bela knows this as surely as she knows anything. Once she’s off the rack, she bargains her way into a more leisurely circle of hellfire and bides her time until one of those newfangled renegade angels come looking for someone with information on a certain slingshot that can bring giants to their knees.
He threatens her of course, but what’s he going to do? Damn her twice. She gives him the name of the demon she sold the slingshot to back when she was still topside in exchange for a ticket out of the fire and brimstone racket. She lobbies for her life back, but it’s just her luck to get a middle management benefactor. The best offer he can make is to send her upstairs. It’s better than nothing.
Heaven, it turns out, is kind of lame. At least for the moment. Every poor sod she runs into has a sob story about their happily ever after crumbling, leaving them scrambling for something new. Then she finds the Roadhouse.
She saunters into the place like she owns it, completely ignoring the other patrons spread around drinking alcohol that won’t so much as make them tipsy.
“Hello, is anyone running this hellhole?” she calls across the counter.
“They’re out.”
Bela turns to find a not entirely unattractive man with a sly smile leering at her.
“Out where?”
Miles shrugs.
“Out back. We’re all on house arrest here, nobody goes too far. They’ll be back soon. I bet I can help you though.”
“I bet you could, but I’m not in the market for that kind of help today. I need directions.”
“Let me just break out my handy dandy guide to the afterlife. Oh wait…sorry sweetheart, this is the only game in town.”
Bela sighs and heads towards the door. It’s so hard to find helpful people these days. She opens the door and gasps before she can stop herself. There’s nothing there anymore, no road, no world, no anything. She feels a hand on her shoulder.
“See what I mean?”
Five
“Hey,” Jo says softly. “What are you doing back here again, sweetie?”
David shrugs and reaches for the nearest rag. He wipes angrily at the same spot until he can’t stand the feeling of Jo watching him out of the corner of her eye anymore. He stops and stares at the other patrons instead.
There’s Ash. He’s always here. Last time, he taught David how to hack into the FBI database, not that it would do them much good in this place. But it was still cool.
At the pool table in the corner, a pretty woman keeps bending over teasing some short dude who seems to suck at playing pool. Or who’s good at making it seem like he does. Two other guys, one in a trench coat and the other one in a suit for some reason, are dancing with each other slowly by the jukebox. Weird.
David sighs. He knows Jo’s not going to stop staring until he spills his guts.
“My family left. I tried to find them, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even find our stupid house.”
Jo kisses his forehead lightly.
“Screw ‘em. You’ve got us.”
David snorts.
“Yeah, for how long? Until some other sad dead people need an imaginary kid.”
“I don’t know,” Jo says. “But until then…”
“I can stay here,” David says and resumes his wiping.
Jo nods.
“When do you think it’ll be our turn?” David asks.
Jo looks around the bar, at Miles still trying his best to get into Bela’s pants and at Boone clinging to Jimmy because he doesn’t have anything else to cling to. And at Ash, good old Ash, content as ever. Then at little David, thirteen and completely fucked. They’ll never get out of here. Maybe they’ll get their shit sorted out upstairs and everybody will go back to their corners, but it won’t change the fact that they’re all dead. Still, the kid deserves some hope. They all do.
“Soon, sweetie, really soon.”
***
Castiel rubs his eyes wearily. The Roadhouse will have to be dealt with. It saddens him. He knows some of those people. Jimmy, Jo. He owes them so much…but this chaos can not be tolerated. The patrons of the bar will have to go back to their respective corners of Heaven. They’ll have to forget about leaving. Dead is dead.
He makes his way to the door. He’ll have to show them there is no exit.