Fic: Not Again
Title: Not Again
Genre: Gen, humour
Rating: PG
Word count: 1958
Summary: People overhear the strangest things in coffee shops. Outsider POV. For the 1 Year Partay at spn_bigpretzel "Not Again" prompt table.
#3
Not Again
1.
Cursed
2.
Thrown Into A Wall
3.
Strangled
4.
Startled
5.
Knocked Out
Eliza slurped her cream-topped chocolate frappe and tapped her fingers on the smooth glass of the café table. Her appointment to get her haircut wasn’t until noon, so she had over an hour to kill. Might as well spend it getting fat and listening to other people’s conversations. Who said people-watching wasn’t a legitimate hobby?
The café was fairly empty. The mid-morning coffee drinkers had filtered out a few minutes after she had arrived, and the lunch crowd hadn’t come in yet. But that just meant it was easier to “overhear” what people were talking about. Eliza was sitting at a table for two, beside the glass front of the café, in prime position to get the morning sun and to see the passers-by on their way to the hairdresser or clothes shops or supermarket. One of her favourite games was to guess where each person was going and what they did for a living. The table for two was also conveniently situated for hearing the opinions of the two girls at the counter about their boss (douchebag), and watching the two old ladies in the corner leaving lipstick stains on their teacups and discussing televised wrestling.
Just as she was about to get up and succumb to the temptation of the cheesecake that had been eyeing her all morning, something outside caught her eye. Someone, actually. No, two someones. No, wait, three. Three men. Don’t stare. Don’t stare. Casually, she got up and bought the cheesecake. Maybe if she didn’t look, they’d come inside.
The bell over the door rang as she was taking her plate of cheesecake back to her table. They were coming inside. She snuck a surreptitious glance at them as she sat down. Underneath the dust and dirt and torn clothing and… was that blood? they looked to be very handsome.
“I don’t see why we have to stop here. We could have waited half an hour and had showers first,” the tallest of the three sounded annoyed. His plaid shirt was missing several buttons and might have once been blue. He looked a bit like he had recently bathed in black ink and hadn’t been able to wipe it all off. He rubbed at his throat.
“I’m as hungry as can be. Don’t be such a bitch, Sammy,” sing-songed the guy next to him, favouring his left side as he edged forward to read the menu. He spoke to the pretty brunette at the counter. “I’ll have the bacon and eggs, Sweetie. Is there somewhere I can go to pee?”
The third man sighed, turning his gaze to the board advertising coffee. A charred trenchcoat hung limply from his shoulders. “Why must you always touch things, Dean? You knew there was the possibility of being cursed.”
Eliza choked on her cheesecake and tried to look innocent when they all turned to look at her.
“The bathroom’s in the back,” the brunette at the counter said, pointing. “There’s a sign. And soap.”
“I couldn’t avoid it where it dangled,” Dean of the strange speech patterns said, “I had to stop Sam being strangled.” He cast a dark look at the man in the ex-trenchcoat. “Your scathing words hold no clout; at least I didn’t get knocked out.”
Now that Dean mentioned it, Eliza could see a darker, matted patch in his hair that looked like blood. Eliza cringed. That looked painful. Maybe she should suggest a doctor? If he’d been knocked out, he might have a concussion. And the other guy, if he’d really been strangled, surely that couldn’t be good.
The man in the trenchcoat glowered at Dean. “The ghost startled me,” he defended himself. “I wasn’t ready.” But Dean was already limping off towards the bathroom, and wasn’t listening.
Eliza suspected the guy did have a concussion. Concussions made you imagine stuff, right? Like, ghosts and curses and stuff. Or maybe he didn’t speak English well, and was mixing up his words. Maybe when he’d said ghost, what he’d really meant was cat. And by cursed he’d meant lost a bet. Yes, that must be it.
“Can I get you guys anything?” The girl at the counter said, with bright false cheer. Eliza could see her trying not to look at the trail of dirt and dust they had made across the floor.
“I do not eat,” said the guy who’d been knocked out.
Sammy laughed awkwardly. “He does really. It’s not like he’s not human or anything. I’ll, er, have the soup. Are you sure you don’t want anything, Cas?”
English was definitely not Cas’s first language, Eliza decided, taking another bite of cheesecake and trying not to stare as the two men sat at a table for four, only two tables away from her. He must have really meant “I’m not hungry.”
Dean made his way slowly back from the bathroom, his dirty green shirt bundled up in his hand. His faded black t-shirt was cleaner, although still dusty, and showed off his muscular shoulders and arms. His left bicep had a nasty red scratch down it, with bruises forming around it. He’d managed to wash off most of the dirt, but still had a few streaks here and there. He sat down and Sammy stood up, heading off in the direction of the bathroom.
“You’ll never get off all that ink. Your shirt’s better with it on, I think,” Dean called after his brother, before turning to Cas and saying, “I don’t get why you’re so mad, it’s not like I did something bad.”
“I am not as good at this as I had hoped, Dean,” Cas said, “I should not have been surprised when the ghost appeared. Your injuries are my fault.”
“It’s true if you’d been on the ball, I wouldn’t have been thrown into the wall,” Dean replied, “But sometimes ghosts can make you jump. Let me take a look at that bump.” He got up and moved around the table to inspect his friend’s head. Cas sat still and straight in the café chair and didn’t flinch when his friend poked at his wound. “It’s okay, you’ll be fine. Now, where’s the food, I want to dine.”
Eliza worked at piecing together what they had been doing. Sammy had been strangled. Dean had been thrown into a wall, somehow, and was for some reason speaking in rhyme. Cas had been knocked out by something he and Dean had both referred to as a “ghost”. They were all covered in dirt, Sammy was covered in ink, and Cas’s coat was severely charred. Maybe they had been exploring one of those old houses on the outskirts of town. They were all falling to pieces, with old wires and bits of furniture everywhere. Maybe Sammy’s flashlight had died and he’d walked into some old curtains and got the cord tangled around his neck. Then Dean had rushed to save him, slipped on something and crashed into a wall, and Cas had gone to save him, but something (a cat, or maybe an owl) had surprised him, and he’d jumped and fallen through a rotten patch of floor, knocking himself out. Of course, that didn’t explain the ink, or the fire, or the rhyme.
The two old ladies in the corner had stopped talking about wrestling, and were openly staring at the dirty men. They weren’t even pretending not to listen to their conversation. How rude.
The blonde girl who had been chatting with her brunette co-worker before the three men came in brought over a large plate of bacon and eggs and placed it in front of Dean. It looked amazing. If Eliza hadn’t just eaten an enormous piece of cheesecake and drunk a chocolate frappe, she would have been tempted. It looked like Cas was tempted, too. He still looked grumpy, but Eliza could see him eyeing Dean’s meal.
Dean laughed. “Who says that angels never eat? After burning bones, eggs can’t be beat.” He curled his arm protectively around his plate. “Don’t just sit there and pine - go get your own, this is mine.”
Eliza sat frozen. Burning bones? Did he say angels? Suddenly, she realised Dean was looking directly at her. She looked down at the crumbs on her plate. “Cas can’t cook, he burned our dinner. In coming here, we picked a winner,” he told her, taking a big bite of toast and eggs and chewing enthusiastically. Eliza breathed a sigh of relief. She knew there would be a decent explanation for the burning bones comment and the burnt coat.
“Oh, he’s got a man-friend; did you hear him call him an angel?” Eliza heard one of the two old ladies say in what was apparently meant to be a whisper. “What a pity.”
Her friend cackled lowly. “You never stood a chance, Vera.”
Dean turned to the old lady and grinned. “On each other we always depend; it doesn’t mean he’s my boyfriend.” He winked at her. Vera turned a shade of pink that matched her blusher.
Sammy returned from the bathroom an interesting shade of grey-blue. No amount of soap had washed off the ink, merely making it less black. He’d removed his plaid shirt, but the ink had soaked through, staining the grey shirt that stretched tightly across his enormous shoulders. His hair was wet, where he had obviously tried to wash some of the ink out, but the brown mop was still streaked with black. The blonde girl set his soup in front of him.
“Do you know anything about removing the curse from Dean, Cas?” Sammy asked, picking up his spoon.
“Why would I know anything about that?” Cas asked, still looking annoyed.
“I just thought you might…”
“I don’t.”
“Hurry up and eat your food,” Dean instructed his brother, stuffing the last of his breakfast into his mouth, “Cas is in a real bad mood. His head’s all lumpy. Maybe that’s why he is grumpy.”
“We need to get this curse broken,” Sammy muttered, blowing on his soup. “This is going to get so annoying.”
“No need to hurry to get it done. I actually think it’s kind of fun.”
The rhyming thing was getting weirder and weirder. Eliza had basically figured out what had happened, now. Old house, practical joke involving bucket of ink, awkwardly placed curtains, slippery patch, wall, wild cat, rotten floor, campfire accident involving sudden rush of flames that had burnt dinner and been put out with the coat. But the rhyming? Everyone kept calling it a curse. Maybe it was a bet, and he had to do something to be allowed to speak normally again. But surely he could just stop. If it had been his friends who’d made the bet, they could just say it was over, and if it was someone else, they weren’t here to know whether he was keeping it up.
“I’ll do it till my debt is paid,” Dean said, and looking straight at Eliza, continued, “Sweetheart, never touch a cursed lampshade.”
They left soon after that, much to Eliza’s disappointment. As they were leaving, she heard Dean say with the air of someone having a sudden epiphany: “Aha! I’ve figured out what’s got your goat! You’re just upset about your coat.”
Eliza, Vera and her friend, and the two girls working in the café gave up any pretence of doing anything else, and watched them climb into a big black car and rumble out of the parking lot.
“What interesting young men,” said Vera, “And what a behind on the tall one.”
Eliza’s thoughts exactly. She looked at her watch and discovered she’d missed her appointment.
So worth it
Genre: Gen, humour
Rating: PG
Word count: 1958
Summary: People overhear the strangest things in coffee shops. Outsider POV. For the 1 Year Partay at spn_bigpretzel "Not Again" prompt table.
#3
Not Again
1.
Cursed
2.
Thrown Into A Wall
3.
Strangled
4.
Startled
5.
Knocked Out
Eliza slurped her cream-topped chocolate frappe and tapped her fingers on the smooth glass of the café table. Her appointment to get her haircut wasn’t until noon, so she had over an hour to kill. Might as well spend it getting fat and listening to other people’s conversations. Who said people-watching wasn’t a legitimate hobby?
The café was fairly empty. The mid-morning coffee drinkers had filtered out a few minutes after she had arrived, and the lunch crowd hadn’t come in yet. But that just meant it was easier to “overhear” what people were talking about. Eliza was sitting at a table for two, beside the glass front of the café, in prime position to get the morning sun and to see the passers-by on their way to the hairdresser or clothes shops or supermarket. One of her favourite games was to guess where each person was going and what they did for a living. The table for two was also conveniently situated for hearing the opinions of the two girls at the counter about their boss (douchebag), and watching the two old ladies in the corner leaving lipstick stains on their teacups and discussing televised wrestling.
Just as she was about to get up and succumb to the temptation of the cheesecake that had been eyeing her all morning, something outside caught her eye. Someone, actually. No, two someones. No, wait, three. Three men. Don’t stare. Don’t stare. Casually, she got up and bought the cheesecake. Maybe if she didn’t look, they’d come inside.
The bell over the door rang as she was taking her plate of cheesecake back to her table. They were coming inside. She snuck a surreptitious glance at them as she sat down. Underneath the dust and dirt and torn clothing and… was that blood? they looked to be very handsome.
“I don’t see why we have to stop here. We could have waited half an hour and had showers first,” the tallest of the three sounded annoyed. His plaid shirt was missing several buttons and might have once been blue. He looked a bit like he had recently bathed in black ink and hadn’t been able to wipe it all off. He rubbed at his throat.
“I’m as hungry as can be. Don’t be such a bitch, Sammy,” sing-songed the guy next to him, favouring his left side as he edged forward to read the menu. He spoke to the pretty brunette at the counter. “I’ll have the bacon and eggs, Sweetie. Is there somewhere I can go to pee?”
The third man sighed, turning his gaze to the board advertising coffee. A charred trenchcoat hung limply from his shoulders. “Why must you always touch things, Dean? You knew there was the possibility of being cursed.”
Eliza choked on her cheesecake and tried to look innocent when they all turned to look at her.
“The bathroom’s in the back,” the brunette at the counter said, pointing. “There’s a sign. And soap.”
“I couldn’t avoid it where it dangled,” Dean of the strange speech patterns said, “I had to stop Sam being strangled.” He cast a dark look at the man in the ex-trenchcoat. “Your scathing words hold no clout; at least I didn’t get knocked out.”
Now that Dean mentioned it, Eliza could see a darker, matted patch in his hair that looked like blood. Eliza cringed. That looked painful. Maybe she should suggest a doctor? If he’d been knocked out, he might have a concussion. And the other guy, if he’d really been strangled, surely that couldn’t be good.
The man in the trenchcoat glowered at Dean. “The ghost startled me,” he defended himself. “I wasn’t ready.” But Dean was already limping off towards the bathroom, and wasn’t listening.
Eliza suspected the guy did have a concussion. Concussions made you imagine stuff, right? Like, ghosts and curses and stuff. Or maybe he didn’t speak English well, and was mixing up his words. Maybe when he’d said ghost, what he’d really meant was cat. And by cursed he’d meant lost a bet. Yes, that must be it.
“Can I get you guys anything?” The girl at the counter said, with bright false cheer. Eliza could see her trying not to look at the trail of dirt and dust they had made across the floor.
“I do not eat,” said the guy who’d been knocked out.
Sammy laughed awkwardly. “He does really. It’s not like he’s not human or anything. I’ll, er, have the soup. Are you sure you don’t want anything, Cas?”
English was definitely not Cas’s first language, Eliza decided, taking another bite of cheesecake and trying not to stare as the two men sat at a table for four, only two tables away from her. He must have really meant “I’m not hungry.”
Dean made his way slowly back from the bathroom, his dirty green shirt bundled up in his hand. His faded black t-shirt was cleaner, although still dusty, and showed off his muscular shoulders and arms. His left bicep had a nasty red scratch down it, with bruises forming around it. He’d managed to wash off most of the dirt, but still had a few streaks here and there. He sat down and Sammy stood up, heading off in the direction of the bathroom.
“You’ll never get off all that ink. Your shirt’s better with it on, I think,” Dean called after his brother, before turning to Cas and saying, “I don’t get why you’re so mad, it’s not like I did something bad.”
“I am not as good at this as I had hoped, Dean,” Cas said, “I should not have been surprised when the ghost appeared. Your injuries are my fault.”
“It’s true if you’d been on the ball, I wouldn’t have been thrown into the wall,” Dean replied, “But sometimes ghosts can make you jump. Let me take a look at that bump.” He got up and moved around the table to inspect his friend’s head. Cas sat still and straight in the café chair and didn’t flinch when his friend poked at his wound. “It’s okay, you’ll be fine. Now, where’s the food, I want to dine.”
Eliza worked at piecing together what they had been doing. Sammy had been strangled. Dean had been thrown into a wall, somehow, and was for some reason speaking in rhyme. Cas had been knocked out by something he and Dean had both referred to as a “ghost”. They were all covered in dirt, Sammy was covered in ink, and Cas’s coat was severely charred. Maybe they had been exploring one of those old houses on the outskirts of town. They were all falling to pieces, with old wires and bits of furniture everywhere. Maybe Sammy’s flashlight had died and he’d walked into some old curtains and got the cord tangled around his neck. Then Dean had rushed to save him, slipped on something and crashed into a wall, and Cas had gone to save him, but something (a cat, or maybe an owl) had surprised him, and he’d jumped and fallen through a rotten patch of floor, knocking himself out. Of course, that didn’t explain the ink, or the fire, or the rhyme.
The two old ladies in the corner had stopped talking about wrestling, and were openly staring at the dirty men. They weren’t even pretending not to listen to their conversation. How rude.
The blonde girl who had been chatting with her brunette co-worker before the three men came in brought over a large plate of bacon and eggs and placed it in front of Dean. It looked amazing. If Eliza hadn’t just eaten an enormous piece of cheesecake and drunk a chocolate frappe, she would have been tempted. It looked like Cas was tempted, too. He still looked grumpy, but Eliza could see him eyeing Dean’s meal.
Dean laughed. “Who says that angels never eat? After burning bones, eggs can’t be beat.” He curled his arm protectively around his plate. “Don’t just sit there and pine - go get your own, this is mine.”
Eliza sat frozen. Burning bones? Did he say angels? Suddenly, she realised Dean was looking directly at her. She looked down at the crumbs on her plate. “Cas can’t cook, he burned our dinner. In coming here, we picked a winner,” he told her, taking a big bite of toast and eggs and chewing enthusiastically. Eliza breathed a sigh of relief. She knew there would be a decent explanation for the burning bones comment and the burnt coat.
“Oh, he’s got a man-friend; did you hear him call him an angel?” Eliza heard one of the two old ladies say in what was apparently meant to be a whisper. “What a pity.”
Her friend cackled lowly. “You never stood a chance, Vera.”
Dean turned to the old lady and grinned. “On each other we always depend; it doesn’t mean he’s my boyfriend.” He winked at her. Vera turned a shade of pink that matched her blusher.
Sammy returned from the bathroom an interesting shade of grey-blue. No amount of soap had washed off the ink, merely making it less black. He’d removed his plaid shirt, but the ink had soaked through, staining the grey shirt that stretched tightly across his enormous shoulders. His hair was wet, where he had obviously tried to wash some of the ink out, but the brown mop was still streaked with black. The blonde girl set his soup in front of him.
“Do you know anything about removing the curse from Dean, Cas?” Sammy asked, picking up his spoon.
“Why would I know anything about that?” Cas asked, still looking annoyed.
“I just thought you might…”
“I don’t.”
“Hurry up and eat your food,” Dean instructed his brother, stuffing the last of his breakfast into his mouth, “Cas is in a real bad mood. His head’s all lumpy. Maybe that’s why he is grumpy.”
“We need to get this curse broken,” Sammy muttered, blowing on his soup. “This is going to get so annoying.”
“No need to hurry to get it done. I actually think it’s kind of fun.”
The rhyming thing was getting weirder and weirder. Eliza had basically figured out what had happened, now. Old house, practical joke involving bucket of ink, awkwardly placed curtains, slippery patch, wall, wild cat, rotten floor, campfire accident involving sudden rush of flames that had burnt dinner and been put out with the coat. But the rhyming? Everyone kept calling it a curse. Maybe it was a bet, and he had to do something to be allowed to speak normally again. But surely he could just stop. If it had been his friends who’d made the bet, they could just say it was over, and if it was someone else, they weren’t here to know whether he was keeping it up.
“I’ll do it till my debt is paid,” Dean said, and looking straight at Eliza, continued, “Sweetheart, never touch a cursed lampshade.”
They left soon after that, much to Eliza’s disappointment. As they were leaving, she heard Dean say with the air of someone having a sudden epiphany: “Aha! I’ve figured out what’s got your goat! You’re just upset about your coat.”
Eliza, Vera and her friend, and the two girls working in the café gave up any pretence of doing anything else, and watched them climb into a big black car and rumble out of the parking lot.
“What interesting young men,” said Vera, “And what a behind on the tall one.”
Eliza’s thoughts exactly. She looked at her watch and discovered she’d missed her appointment.
So worth it