SPN FIC: Shop Life (1/1)
Title: Shop Life
Author: infraredphaeton
Pairing: As gen as the show. (lol subtext!) An eleven year has a crush on a grown man.
Warnings: Several OCs, trickery, liking of Evanescence and other emo/rock bands
Summary: Darryl is a hunter. Keith is his brother. Jack is a shop owner, nothing more. Sam Winchester is a myth, nothing less.
A/N:I do not like Evanescence. This needs to be said before you read this,okay?
My first SPN fic is pretending not to be a supernatural fic. Thanks a lot, brain. Enjoy, guys. Weird ass way to tell a story, but I hope you like it.
As far as Darryl can tell, Jack Thompson is a little under forty years old. He’s cool for an old guy- old for this business, just starting to grey at the temples but strong and lean as a whippet- never too busy to stop and talk, whether it’s about hunts gone by (and Jesus, Darryl never wants to deal with a Rakshasa. Clowns are fucking scary) or the fastest way to dig a grave between two people.
Mr. Thompson- who refuses to be called Mr. Thompson, he’s been Jack since Darryl’s second visit- is definitely a cool guy, never gives him any shit about Keith, although once, when Keith’d disappeared for an hour and Darryl chewed him out in the corner of the store, crammed between a sack of bozoars and a bookshelf filled with curse boxes and grimoirs, he’d noticed a fonder tilt to the ever present smirk on Jack’s face.
Darryl had turned away for a few minutes to pick up the bag of supplies he’d come in for, an eye of Keith the whole time (fucking hour and a half!), and he saw Jack lean down and tell Keith something quietly- anyone else and Darryl would’ve called it a whisper, but Jack just wasn’t the whispery type, so he’d stick with quiet until he found a real word that described the heavy, half growl half hiss that Jack used when he was quiet. And yeah, after that, Keith was a total shithead for a week, kept trying to change Darryl’s Evanescence CD out for AC/DC, which was just not cool, but he stayed close, and somehow Darryl knew that both those things were Jack Thompson’s fault, which put him high up in the shithead ranks, just beneath Darryl’s annoying little brother and the rawhead that’d almost gutted Darryl when he was fourteen.
But Jack is still just a shop guy, not a hunter. Good enough to track down the real grimoirs, and find Daryl some real gris gris bags for that one poltergeist in South Carolina (yeah, so Darryl had overheard Jack on the phone with his supplier, and yeah, add Missouri Mosely to the list of things Darryl never wants to deal with. Possibly even more than the rakshasa.) but not exactly a field guy. Then again, Jack wasn’t a geek either, he knew just enough Latin to teach Darryl a faster version of the Rituale Romanum, to know what exactly it was he kept on his shelves.
So when Darryl stumbles into the shop, pushing up the security gate that was kept down just for show (though it did keep people off Jack’s back pretty well- Darryl’d almost walked past the first time he tried to find him) with one arm under Keith’s knees, the other supporting his head and shoulders like his sixteen year old brother is a heroine in a crappy romcom, he does expect Jack to swear as he pulls out a first aid kit, working around Darryl to pour holy water over the deep scratches and thread a needle out of a suture kit, he doesn’t expect Jack to go under the counter for a shotgun, dialling a number on his cell phone as he fills a duffel with salt shells and explosives.
Jack is the cool older uncle that Darryl never had, has been since he’d skulked his way into Jack’s shop at the age of thirteen, totally determined that whatever had killed his aunt sure as shit wasn’t gonna kill his little brother. Jack’d taken one look at him, raised an eyebrow, and said, matter of fact, “werewolf?”
Actually, it was a weretiger, but when Darryl took off its head and lit it on fire, whistling ‘Call Me When You’re Sober’ as he tamped down the ashes, it was close enough to make him interested.
Interested enough to come back to the little shop and its pretty fucking awesome owner.
It took another three visits before he’d brought Keith with him, leaving his little brother in the corner, at a school desk Jack swore wasn’t haunted by its former owner anymore, to do his homework while he sharpened knives and talked tactics with Jack. It all added up. Jack was a cool guy. He even gave Darryl his hand-me-downs, shirts that had shrunk in the wash and jeans that’d worn out around the knee brace Jack had to wear. Good enough to wear, but not suitable for Jack. And if that happened a couple to many times for Darryl’s peace of mind, well, Jack had no objection to calling him up at three AM with a “Dude, you’re in Cali, right? Could you pick me up half a dozen sand dollars from your nearest beach on the way back? Sammy needs a new amulet.’
Jack was also the one who’d talked Darryl out of dropping Keith (wham, bam, one two punch and he would be down. He never guarded his right) when the little shit had reported him to Social Services. ‘Unfit Guardian’ his ass- those bruises were from a rawhead (those fuckers just loved Darryl, apparently). Sat them both down and given them a chewing out like what he hadn’t heard since Aunt Kelly died. Darryl had come away from that one just a little bit scared, and a little bit in awe. Keith had come away a whole lot more scared, but also just a little bit in love.
And hadn’t that been fun, watching the eleven year old attempt to woo the older man with offerings of various spell ingredients. First crush behaviour was adorable on Darryl’s little brother. Watching Jack’s reaction had been even funnier, especially when the ex-hunter had found a selection of poetry talking about his lips, freckles, eyes, and, swear-to-god, his amazing ass.
Darryl still likes to replay the image of Jack, redder than a fire truck, at times when the bastard’s got one up on him, like when he’d glued Darryl’s fingers to his phone. But reciting ‘And his eyes, greener than a deep green pond, and his ass, tighter than a-‘ got Keith throwing things, and Jack reddening, so it was all good.
From what Darryl saw of the poem, it was pretty good for an eleven year old. Pretty dirty, too, which made Darryl all warm in the big brotherly part of his chest, even if he’d never wanted to know how long his adolescent brother spent staring at his sort-of-uncle’s ass.
It was only about a month after the poetry incident that Darryl realised that Jack had sort of become their home base. After a hunt, he always ended up back in the shop, manning the register when Jack was busy, sharing a bedroom with his little brother and watching the obits, waiting for something to come up. It was comfortable, and the first time he saw Keith meet up with other kids his age who already knew him, Darryl decided not to fight it.
Jack was a little slower. He only caught on when Darryl left a load of washing in the little half storage, half guest room he and Keith shared. Jack called halfway through track six on the new Breaking Benjamin album, and was distracted so much by the ‘fuckwittery coming out of your speakers’ that he’d already worked his way through the bigger issue of Darryl’s taste in music before getting to the ‘living with him’ problem. As dissing any music made after nineteen ninety had, apparently, worn him out, Darryl just got a ‘And I’m not doing your fucking laundry, man, so if you’re gonna leave it, leave it clean. I’m throwing it out if it starts moving on its own.’
Problem solved.
So yeah, Keith gets sutured and bandaged and propped up on the faded green sofa, and Jack is arguing on the phone. Darryl listens in until he hears “Goddamn it, Sam!”
Then he tunes out. The mythical Sammy seems to visit only when they’re on hunts; long enough to pick up supplies and leave Jack still grinning when they get back. Darryl’s kind of numb feeling, looking at Keith, who’s pale, his short black hair (cut like Jack’s- for all he’d got over the crush, he now tried to copy the man in everything else) spiked with sweat. But there’s no time for sitting around in shock.
There’s never a good time to freak out, and Keith’s not gonna get better if Darryl decides that, actually, a fugue state sounds like a fucking awesome idea, for all that it does. He’d told himself, back when Aunt Kelly had died, guts spilling over Darryl’s hands as he tried to keep them in, that he wasn’t gonna do that again. He’d fallen into the habit of not speaking to anyone for over a week, spacing out and not paying attention to anything except the ever present phantom slick slide of blood and intestines over his hands, until Keith’d snapped him out of it by telling him that the milk was ‘all green’, and they were out of cheerios, so he hadn’t had any breakfast. Goddamn if that hadn’t snapped Darryl out of it better than a slap to the face.
No way was Darryl letting his stupidity hurt his little brother.
Except it has, because Keith was bleeding like crazy when Darryl pulled him out of the Garuda’s nest, and now, he’s fucking zoning out again, apparently, because next thing he knows, Jack is shaking his shoulder, frowning. He’s carrying the duffel, his cell phone already put away, and Keith is covered with the blanket Darryl had bought in Mexico for fifty pesos.
“Back with me, dude?” Jack asks, and Darryl nods, blinking as Jack passes him a shotgun. He automatically checks it for load, and sure enough, Jack’s loaded it with a mix of iron, silver and salt. Whatever takes this is going down for good.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” Darryl replies, standing up. He doesn’t even wince- the bird barely touched him, heading straight for sweeter meat in the form of Keith. All he’s got are bruises.
“Great. Sammy’s gonna meet us en route, so give me your keys.” He holds out a hand, demanding, and Darryl blinks at him.
“Why?”
“I’m driving.”
“It’s my car!” Darryl protests, already digging the keys to his car- an Aston Martin DB9, and Jack can talk shit about imports all he likes, but Darryl’s car purrs along the highway- out of his jeans and handing it over.
Jack just looks at him. “Keys, dude.”
He hands them over.
Jack reaches over behind the counter on the way out, flicking on the security locks and grabbing a tape from a rack of similar, mounted on a shelf next to the register.
“What? No! You’re not playing Deep Purple in my car!”
Jack grins evilly, beeping open the door and sliding in. He switches the sound from CD to tape, exchanging the opening chords of Escape the Fate for the sharp bass of Deep Purple. Darryl grits his teeth as Smoke on the Water makes his seat vibrate.
“Driver picks the music, kid. Shotgun shuts his cakehole.” He gives Darryl a sharp edged grin and rockets out of his crooked park.
They pull into the parking lot of a motel six, and Jack slams the door on his way out, which makes Darryl wince in the way only a man who loves his car can wince. Apparently, the mythical Sam is here. Jack stops by a big black beast of a car, a Chevy Impala, and begins to make cooing noises, running his hand over the fender and stroking the hood in a way Darryl finds hugely disturbing. And Darryl once punched a man for looking at his car wrong. That tells you something about just how scary Jack is about the Impala.
“Hey. Get off my car.” Darryl spins around at the voice, and immediately has to look up, because woah, tall. Despite his words, the giant doesn’t look pissed off. He looks amused actually, and Jack just grins and coos “But she missed me, didn’t you baby?” and strokes the hood again.
The giant smiles, hair flopping over his forehead, and he doesn’t look scary anymore, shooting Darryl a ‘pleased-to-meet-you’ polite smile and moving over to Jack.
“How’s the leg?”
Ah, so this is Sam. Not all that many people know about Jack’s fucked up knee. Darryl found out when he turned eighteen, and Jack and he had gotten properly shit faced and started talking war stories. Jack had outshone Darryl’s huge bite marks (they covered half his torso, big fangy indentations from yet another fucking rawhead) by rolling up his pant leg and unbuckling the ever present leg brace. And… yeah. Fuck. Ow.
…Darryl is never gonna tangle with a dragon, either, thanks very much.
“Painful as a dry ass-fuck,” Jack replies, finally turning away from his car.
“That is so disgusting, man.” Sam-the-giant says, wrinkling his nose.
“I...don’t wanna know how you know that.” Darryl adds, shaking his head, and Jack grins.
“Ah, so young and innocent. Don’t worry kid. You’ll get there.” He claps Darryl on the shoulder and follows Sam over to the trunk.
“I don’t think I wanna get there,” Darryl mutters, slouching over as Sam unlocks the trunk, propping up the fake bottom with a sawed-off.
“Sorry to interrupt this riveting tale of depravity, but what’re we dealing with?” Sam asks, looking over his arsenal. Darryl is distracted by a very shiny, curvy knife lurking behind some green ashwood.
“Garuda,” he replies, considering whether the pretty knife is worth the lecture he’d get from Jack if he grabbed it.
“Just one?” Sam questions, grabbing iron shot, gasoline and a tin of salt.
Darryl smirks, “I got the rest.”
“Didn’t get this one though, did you?” Jack points out nastily, claiming the knife Darryl had been coveting.
Darryl’s mouth clamps shut.
“Alright.” Sam slams the trunk shut, “Where are we headed?”
Darryl’s about to answer when he realises what the fuck he’s doing.
Jack is great, but, as he’s said before, no hunter. He’s the weapons guy, the medical guy, the fucking crippled guy.
“I don’t think this is a great idea.” He volunteers when Jack looks at him, waiting for an answer.
“Why the fuck not, kid?” Jack raises an eyebrow.
“Because….because!”
“Eloquent kid you’ve got there, Jack.” Sam smirks at him.
“Shut up, Sammy. Usually he’s fine. Something must have rattled the brain cells he has left.”
Darryl is fuming, but it’s an anger that isn’t their fault. It’s just, his brother is hurt, and his back up is a cripple and a myth (because you can’t hear about someone for years, being told you ‘just’ missed them every time, and not just finally go, fine! They don’t exist, then)
“Because my brother’s half dead, and I don’t even know you, Sam. And, Jack, dude, you can’t run, let alone hunt, and, hey, did I mention my brother’s half dead?”
“Brothers?” Sam looks at Jack.
“Shut up, dude.” Jack blushes slightly.
“Seriously, brothers?”
“Look, just, shut up, and maybe I won’t put nair in your shampoo again.”
“Joke isn’t funny if you do it four times, man.” Sam looks beaten on when he says that, the long suffering look of practical joke victims everywhere.
“Remember the issue, guys!” Darryl half shouts, and they stop bickering.
“Issue?” Jack looks confused.
“You can’t hunt, remember?” Sam half snickers, and Jack grins.
“Right. Of course.”
They chuckle.
“Dude, what the hell? This is so not a time to be laughing! This is a time to panic!” Darryl feels like the lone sane person in a group of mental patients.
“You ever heard of the Winchester brothers?” Sam asks, and Darryl nods.
“Yeah. But so, so, irrelevant. This is panic time, not, do you remember the hunting legends time! Panic!”
“He’s not going to panic, kid.” Jack tells him, and Darryl blinks.
“Uh…Garuda? Remember the Garuda? The little brother disembowelling Garuda?”
“Were we ever that young?” Sam asks Jack, almost wistfully.
“No. But you used to be equally loud and nonsensical.”
“Ohh, you’re busting out the big words now, huh?”
“GARUDA!” Darryl interrupts, flapping his arms like wings.
“Dude, we get it.” Jack replies, rolling his eyes.
“Okay, so, Darryl, you’ve heard of the Winchesters.”
He nods. Obviously, they aren’t going to listen to him until he listens to them.
“Alright, now you know that they’re brothers, right?”
Another nod.
“And they’re called…” Sam trails off hopefully.
“Sam Winchester.” Darryl says, and looks at Sam again, standing in front of the Impala. The Impala. Wait, he’s heard stories about that. The Winchesters have an Impala. An Imapala and a Sam who hunts. Who’s the right age.
Darryl blinks. He seems to be doing that a lot tonight. “Sam Winchester?” He points at Sam.
“Nice to meet you,” Sam says, waving a little. Darryl sits on the Impala’s bumper. It’s either that or fall over.
The stories he’s heard say…they say…Oh my god, Sam Winchester.
Darryl almost wants to ask for his autograph. Or possibly pass out.
“But, they said Sam never goes anywhere without his brother. And Dean’s dead. Everyone says you’re dead too. Dead and dead. Both, you know, dead, and not, you know, uh, here.” Darryl is flapping again. He feels like he’s going to have a panic attack.
“Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Jack drawls.
“Not Jack?”
“Ah, no.” Jack- no, Dean- admits, looking slightly sheepish.
“Dean?”
Dean -Jack is more familiar, but his name is Dean- nods. Darryl closes his eyes.
“You know, he’s not normally this excitable.” Dean tells Sam.
“I guessed that. I don’t think you’d keep him around if he was.”
“Nah. He’s cool. Likes pie, likes girls. Nice kid. Him and his brother are cool.”
Brother. Keith. He can’t do this right now. Darryl stands up.
“Right,” he says calmly, “We kill the Garuda. We burn the Garuda. We go home. I check on Keith. Then, I kill you,” he tells Dean, who blinks. Yeah, it’s definitely his turn to blink. Darryl is done with the goddamn blinking. And the confusion. Dean can definitely have the confusion, too.
“Darryl, I think you need to tell Sam you don’t mean that,” Dean says, and Darryl turns to Sam, who has turned back into the scary, stone faced giant he’d seen in the parking lot.
“Well, maybe not kill. Just torture.” He amends. Sam is not impressed.
“You’re not touching Dean.”
“I don’t need to.” Darryl smiles, and clears his throat, “’Oh! But Jack, he’s got hair that an awesome shade of brown, and he’s got freckles that are really kind of cute and definitely rhyme with brown-’”
He doesn’t get any further before Dean tackles him, but Sam is already beginning to chuckle.
A small wrestling match later, after Sam has separated them, and Darryl has stopped laughing, they move to get started.
“Garuda means a double shot, silver then iron to the heart. We burn it once it’s down, and it oughta stay down,” Sam lectures, but Darryl already knows. He’s killed the rest of its eyrie.
Dean makes a sharp gimme gesture to Sam, who hands over his car keys reluctantly.
“I hope you haven’t been playing any of your modern shit on my baby’s speakers,” he tells Sam as he throws Darryl his keys.
“Look, Oasis isn’t exactly modern,” Sam wheedles, but Dean is horrified, and Darryl grins as he slips into his car, jacking the seat forward so he can reach the pedals. Dean is pretty big, and his brother is apparently the Yeti after a shave and a shower, so it’s too far back for Darryl. Who is not short, despite what Dean and Keith say. They are just freakily tall. Most of the world is freakily tall.
The Imapala growls, and Darryl guns his engine, pulling out Dean’s tape. He pushes in his Evanescence CD and cranks up the volume.
They kill the Garuda.
They burn the Garuda.
They go home.
He checks on Keith.
He doesn’t kill Dean, but the lecture he delivers comes close.
and then they lived happily ever after
And then, there was another fucking rawhead. This one was in Indiana.
Life goes on, even after the story ends.
END
Author: infraredphaeton
Pairing: As gen as the show. (lol subtext!) An eleven year has a crush on a grown man.
Warnings: Several OCs, trickery, liking of Evanescence and other emo/rock bands
Summary: Darryl is a hunter. Keith is his brother. Jack is a shop owner, nothing more. Sam Winchester is a myth, nothing less.
A/N:I do not like Evanescence. This needs to be said before you read this,okay?
My first SPN fic is pretending not to be a supernatural fic. Thanks a lot, brain. Enjoy, guys. Weird ass way to tell a story, but I hope you like it.
As far as Darryl can tell, Jack Thompson is a little under forty years old. He’s cool for an old guy- old for this business, just starting to grey at the temples but strong and lean as a whippet- never too busy to stop and talk, whether it’s about hunts gone by (and Jesus, Darryl never wants to deal with a Rakshasa. Clowns are fucking scary) or the fastest way to dig a grave between two people.
Mr. Thompson- who refuses to be called Mr. Thompson, he’s been Jack since Darryl’s second visit- is definitely a cool guy, never gives him any shit about Keith, although once, when Keith’d disappeared for an hour and Darryl chewed him out in the corner of the store, crammed between a sack of bozoars and a bookshelf filled with curse boxes and grimoirs, he’d noticed a fonder tilt to the ever present smirk on Jack’s face.
Darryl had turned away for a few minutes to pick up the bag of supplies he’d come in for, an eye of Keith the whole time (fucking hour and a half!), and he saw Jack lean down and tell Keith something quietly- anyone else and Darryl would’ve called it a whisper, but Jack just wasn’t the whispery type, so he’d stick with quiet until he found a real word that described the heavy, half growl half hiss that Jack used when he was quiet. And yeah, after that, Keith was a total shithead for a week, kept trying to change Darryl’s Evanescence CD out for AC/DC, which was just not cool, but he stayed close, and somehow Darryl knew that both those things were Jack Thompson’s fault, which put him high up in the shithead ranks, just beneath Darryl’s annoying little brother and the rawhead that’d almost gutted Darryl when he was fourteen.
But Jack is still just a shop guy, not a hunter. Good enough to track down the real grimoirs, and find Daryl some real gris gris bags for that one poltergeist in South Carolina (yeah, so Darryl had overheard Jack on the phone with his supplier, and yeah, add Missouri Mosely to the list of things Darryl never wants to deal with. Possibly even more than the rakshasa.) but not exactly a field guy. Then again, Jack wasn’t a geek either, he knew just enough Latin to teach Darryl a faster version of the Rituale Romanum, to know what exactly it was he kept on his shelves.
So when Darryl stumbles into the shop, pushing up the security gate that was kept down just for show (though it did keep people off Jack’s back pretty well- Darryl’d almost walked past the first time he tried to find him) with one arm under Keith’s knees, the other supporting his head and shoulders like his sixteen year old brother is a heroine in a crappy romcom, he does expect Jack to swear as he pulls out a first aid kit, working around Darryl to pour holy water over the deep scratches and thread a needle out of a suture kit, he doesn’t expect Jack to go under the counter for a shotgun, dialling a number on his cell phone as he fills a duffel with salt shells and explosives.
Jack is the cool older uncle that Darryl never had, has been since he’d skulked his way into Jack’s shop at the age of thirteen, totally determined that whatever had killed his aunt sure as shit wasn’t gonna kill his little brother. Jack’d taken one look at him, raised an eyebrow, and said, matter of fact, “werewolf?”
Actually, it was a weretiger, but when Darryl took off its head and lit it on fire, whistling ‘Call Me When You’re Sober’ as he tamped down the ashes, it was close enough to make him interested.
Interested enough to come back to the little shop and its pretty fucking awesome owner.
It took another three visits before he’d brought Keith with him, leaving his little brother in the corner, at a school desk Jack swore wasn’t haunted by its former owner anymore, to do his homework while he sharpened knives and talked tactics with Jack. It all added up. Jack was a cool guy. He even gave Darryl his hand-me-downs, shirts that had shrunk in the wash and jeans that’d worn out around the knee brace Jack had to wear. Good enough to wear, but not suitable for Jack. And if that happened a couple to many times for Darryl’s peace of mind, well, Jack had no objection to calling him up at three AM with a “Dude, you’re in Cali, right? Could you pick me up half a dozen sand dollars from your nearest beach on the way back? Sammy needs a new amulet.’
Jack was also the one who’d talked Darryl out of dropping Keith (wham, bam, one two punch and he would be down. He never guarded his right) when the little shit had reported him to Social Services. ‘Unfit Guardian’ his ass- those bruises were from a rawhead (those fuckers just loved Darryl, apparently). Sat them both down and given them a chewing out like what he hadn’t heard since Aunt Kelly died. Darryl had come away from that one just a little bit scared, and a little bit in awe. Keith had come away a whole lot more scared, but also just a little bit in love.
And hadn’t that been fun, watching the eleven year old attempt to woo the older man with offerings of various spell ingredients. First crush behaviour was adorable on Darryl’s little brother. Watching Jack’s reaction had been even funnier, especially when the ex-hunter had found a selection of poetry talking about his lips, freckles, eyes, and, swear-to-god, his amazing ass.
Darryl still likes to replay the image of Jack, redder than a fire truck, at times when the bastard’s got one up on him, like when he’d glued Darryl’s fingers to his phone. But reciting ‘And his eyes, greener than a deep green pond, and his ass, tighter than a-‘ got Keith throwing things, and Jack reddening, so it was all good.
From what Darryl saw of the poem, it was pretty good for an eleven year old. Pretty dirty, too, which made Darryl all warm in the big brotherly part of his chest, even if he’d never wanted to know how long his adolescent brother spent staring at his sort-of-uncle’s ass.
It was only about a month after the poetry incident that Darryl realised that Jack had sort of become their home base. After a hunt, he always ended up back in the shop, manning the register when Jack was busy, sharing a bedroom with his little brother and watching the obits, waiting for something to come up. It was comfortable, and the first time he saw Keith meet up with other kids his age who already knew him, Darryl decided not to fight it.
Jack was a little slower. He only caught on when Darryl left a load of washing in the little half storage, half guest room he and Keith shared. Jack called halfway through track six on the new Breaking Benjamin album, and was distracted so much by the ‘fuckwittery coming out of your speakers’ that he’d already worked his way through the bigger issue of Darryl’s taste in music before getting to the ‘living with him’ problem. As dissing any music made after nineteen ninety had, apparently, worn him out, Darryl just got a ‘And I’m not doing your fucking laundry, man, so if you’re gonna leave it, leave it clean. I’m throwing it out if it starts moving on its own.’
Problem solved.
So yeah, Keith gets sutured and bandaged and propped up on the faded green sofa, and Jack is arguing on the phone. Darryl listens in until he hears “Goddamn it, Sam!”
Then he tunes out. The mythical Sammy seems to visit only when they’re on hunts; long enough to pick up supplies and leave Jack still grinning when they get back. Darryl’s kind of numb feeling, looking at Keith, who’s pale, his short black hair (cut like Jack’s- for all he’d got over the crush, he now tried to copy the man in everything else) spiked with sweat. But there’s no time for sitting around in shock.
There’s never a good time to freak out, and Keith’s not gonna get better if Darryl decides that, actually, a fugue state sounds like a fucking awesome idea, for all that it does. He’d told himself, back when Aunt Kelly had died, guts spilling over Darryl’s hands as he tried to keep them in, that he wasn’t gonna do that again. He’d fallen into the habit of not speaking to anyone for over a week, spacing out and not paying attention to anything except the ever present phantom slick slide of blood and intestines over his hands, until Keith’d snapped him out of it by telling him that the milk was ‘all green’, and they were out of cheerios, so he hadn’t had any breakfast. Goddamn if that hadn’t snapped Darryl out of it better than a slap to the face.
No way was Darryl letting his stupidity hurt his little brother.
Except it has, because Keith was bleeding like crazy when Darryl pulled him out of the Garuda’s nest, and now, he’s fucking zoning out again, apparently, because next thing he knows, Jack is shaking his shoulder, frowning. He’s carrying the duffel, his cell phone already put away, and Keith is covered with the blanket Darryl had bought in Mexico for fifty pesos.
“Back with me, dude?” Jack asks, and Darryl nods, blinking as Jack passes him a shotgun. He automatically checks it for load, and sure enough, Jack’s loaded it with a mix of iron, silver and salt. Whatever takes this is going down for good.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” Darryl replies, standing up. He doesn’t even wince- the bird barely touched him, heading straight for sweeter meat in the form of Keith. All he’s got are bruises.
“Great. Sammy’s gonna meet us en route, so give me your keys.” He holds out a hand, demanding, and Darryl blinks at him.
“Why?”
“I’m driving.”
“It’s my car!” Darryl protests, already digging the keys to his car- an Aston Martin DB9, and Jack can talk shit about imports all he likes, but Darryl’s car purrs along the highway- out of his jeans and handing it over.
Jack just looks at him. “Keys, dude.”
He hands them over.
Jack reaches over behind the counter on the way out, flicking on the security locks and grabbing a tape from a rack of similar, mounted on a shelf next to the register.
“What? No! You’re not playing Deep Purple in my car!”
Jack grins evilly, beeping open the door and sliding in. He switches the sound from CD to tape, exchanging the opening chords of Escape the Fate for the sharp bass of Deep Purple. Darryl grits his teeth as Smoke on the Water makes his seat vibrate.
“Driver picks the music, kid. Shotgun shuts his cakehole.” He gives Darryl a sharp edged grin and rockets out of his crooked park.
They pull into the parking lot of a motel six, and Jack slams the door on his way out, which makes Darryl wince in the way only a man who loves his car can wince. Apparently, the mythical Sam is here. Jack stops by a big black beast of a car, a Chevy Impala, and begins to make cooing noises, running his hand over the fender and stroking the hood in a way Darryl finds hugely disturbing. And Darryl once punched a man for looking at his car wrong. That tells you something about just how scary Jack is about the Impala.
“Hey. Get off my car.” Darryl spins around at the voice, and immediately has to look up, because woah, tall. Despite his words, the giant doesn’t look pissed off. He looks amused actually, and Jack just grins and coos “But she missed me, didn’t you baby?” and strokes the hood again.
The giant smiles, hair flopping over his forehead, and he doesn’t look scary anymore, shooting Darryl a ‘pleased-to-meet-you’ polite smile and moving over to Jack.
“How’s the leg?”
Ah, so this is Sam. Not all that many people know about Jack’s fucked up knee. Darryl found out when he turned eighteen, and Jack and he had gotten properly shit faced and started talking war stories. Jack had outshone Darryl’s huge bite marks (they covered half his torso, big fangy indentations from yet another fucking rawhead) by rolling up his pant leg and unbuckling the ever present leg brace. And… yeah. Fuck. Ow.
…Darryl is never gonna tangle with a dragon, either, thanks very much.
“Painful as a dry ass-fuck,” Jack replies, finally turning away from his car.
“That is so disgusting, man.” Sam-the-giant says, wrinkling his nose.
“I...don’t wanna know how you know that.” Darryl adds, shaking his head, and Jack grins.
“Ah, so young and innocent. Don’t worry kid. You’ll get there.” He claps Darryl on the shoulder and follows Sam over to the trunk.
“I don’t think I wanna get there,” Darryl mutters, slouching over as Sam unlocks the trunk, propping up the fake bottom with a sawed-off.
“Sorry to interrupt this riveting tale of depravity, but what’re we dealing with?” Sam asks, looking over his arsenal. Darryl is distracted by a very shiny, curvy knife lurking behind some green ashwood.
“Garuda,” he replies, considering whether the pretty knife is worth the lecture he’d get from Jack if he grabbed it.
“Just one?” Sam questions, grabbing iron shot, gasoline and a tin of salt.
Darryl smirks, “I got the rest.”
“Didn’t get this one though, did you?” Jack points out nastily, claiming the knife Darryl had been coveting.
Darryl’s mouth clamps shut.
“Alright.” Sam slams the trunk shut, “Where are we headed?”
Darryl’s about to answer when he realises what the fuck he’s doing.
Jack is great, but, as he’s said before, no hunter. He’s the weapons guy, the medical guy, the fucking crippled guy.
“I don’t think this is a great idea.” He volunteers when Jack looks at him, waiting for an answer.
“Why the fuck not, kid?” Jack raises an eyebrow.
“Because….because!”
“Eloquent kid you’ve got there, Jack.” Sam smirks at him.
“Shut up, Sammy. Usually he’s fine. Something must have rattled the brain cells he has left.”
Darryl is fuming, but it’s an anger that isn’t their fault. It’s just, his brother is hurt, and his back up is a cripple and a myth (because you can’t hear about someone for years, being told you ‘just’ missed them every time, and not just finally go, fine! They don’t exist, then)
“Because my brother’s half dead, and I don’t even know you, Sam. And, Jack, dude, you can’t run, let alone hunt, and, hey, did I mention my brother’s half dead?”
“Brothers?” Sam looks at Jack.
“Shut up, dude.” Jack blushes slightly.
“Seriously, brothers?”
“Look, just, shut up, and maybe I won’t put nair in your shampoo again.”
“Joke isn’t funny if you do it four times, man.” Sam looks beaten on when he says that, the long suffering look of practical joke victims everywhere.
“Remember the issue, guys!” Darryl half shouts, and they stop bickering.
“Issue?” Jack looks confused.
“You can’t hunt, remember?” Sam half snickers, and Jack grins.
“Right. Of course.”
They chuckle.
“Dude, what the hell? This is so not a time to be laughing! This is a time to panic!” Darryl feels like the lone sane person in a group of mental patients.
“You ever heard of the Winchester brothers?” Sam asks, and Darryl nods.
“Yeah. But so, so, irrelevant. This is panic time, not, do you remember the hunting legends time! Panic!”
“He’s not going to panic, kid.” Jack tells him, and Darryl blinks.
“Uh…Garuda? Remember the Garuda? The little brother disembowelling Garuda?”
“Were we ever that young?” Sam asks Jack, almost wistfully.
“No. But you used to be equally loud and nonsensical.”
“Ohh, you’re busting out the big words now, huh?”
“GARUDA!” Darryl interrupts, flapping his arms like wings.
“Dude, we get it.” Jack replies, rolling his eyes.
“Okay, so, Darryl, you’ve heard of the Winchesters.”
He nods. Obviously, they aren’t going to listen to him until he listens to them.
“Alright, now you know that they’re brothers, right?”
Another nod.
“And they’re called…” Sam trails off hopefully.
“Sam Winchester.” Darryl says, and looks at Sam again, standing in front of the Impala. The Impala. Wait, he’s heard stories about that. The Winchesters have an Impala. An Imapala and a Sam who hunts. Who’s the right age.
Darryl blinks. He seems to be doing that a lot tonight. “Sam Winchester?” He points at Sam.
“Nice to meet you,” Sam says, waving a little. Darryl sits on the Impala’s bumper. It’s either that or fall over.
The stories he’s heard say…they say…Oh my god, Sam Winchester.
Darryl almost wants to ask for his autograph. Or possibly pass out.
“But, they said Sam never goes anywhere without his brother. And Dean’s dead. Everyone says you’re dead too. Dead and dead. Both, you know, dead, and not, you know, uh, here.” Darryl is flapping again. He feels like he’s going to have a panic attack.
“Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” Jack drawls.
“Not Jack?”
“Ah, no.” Jack- no, Dean- admits, looking slightly sheepish.
“Dean?”
Dean -Jack is more familiar, but his name is Dean- nods. Darryl closes his eyes.
“You know, he’s not normally this excitable.” Dean tells Sam.
“I guessed that. I don’t think you’d keep him around if he was.”
“Nah. He’s cool. Likes pie, likes girls. Nice kid. Him and his brother are cool.”
Brother. Keith. He can’t do this right now. Darryl stands up.
“Right,” he says calmly, “We kill the Garuda. We burn the Garuda. We go home. I check on Keith. Then, I kill you,” he tells Dean, who blinks. Yeah, it’s definitely his turn to blink. Darryl is done with the goddamn blinking. And the confusion. Dean can definitely have the confusion, too.
“Darryl, I think you need to tell Sam you don’t mean that,” Dean says, and Darryl turns to Sam, who has turned back into the scary, stone faced giant he’d seen in the parking lot.
“Well, maybe not kill. Just torture.” He amends. Sam is not impressed.
“You’re not touching Dean.”
“I don’t need to.” Darryl smiles, and clears his throat, “’Oh! But Jack, he’s got hair that an awesome shade of brown, and he’s got freckles that are really kind of cute and definitely rhyme with brown-’”
He doesn’t get any further before Dean tackles him, but Sam is already beginning to chuckle.
A small wrestling match later, after Sam has separated them, and Darryl has stopped laughing, they move to get started.
“Garuda means a double shot, silver then iron to the heart. We burn it once it’s down, and it oughta stay down,” Sam lectures, but Darryl already knows. He’s killed the rest of its eyrie.
Dean makes a sharp gimme gesture to Sam, who hands over his car keys reluctantly.
“I hope you haven’t been playing any of your modern shit on my baby’s speakers,” he tells Sam as he throws Darryl his keys.
“Look, Oasis isn’t exactly modern,” Sam wheedles, but Dean is horrified, and Darryl grins as he slips into his car, jacking the seat forward so he can reach the pedals. Dean is pretty big, and his brother is apparently the Yeti after a shave and a shower, so it’s too far back for Darryl. Who is not short, despite what Dean and Keith say. They are just freakily tall. Most of the world is freakily tall.
The Imapala growls, and Darryl guns his engine, pulling out Dean’s tape. He pushes in his Evanescence CD and cranks up the volume.
They kill the Garuda.
They burn the Garuda.
They go home.
He checks on Keith.
He doesn’t kill Dean, but the lecture he delivers comes close.
and then they lived happily ever after
And then, there was another fucking rawhead. This one was in Indiana.
Life goes on, even after the story ends.
END