A/N: Been sick recently, sick and dreary and yucky. When I get like this, I watch movies endlessly, for lack of anything better to do. Last time, it was the Lord of the Rings trilogy four times in a row. This time, I've been power-watching Supernatural. For this, I got really, really weird dreams, inspiration for a Cas-centric fic that will not cooperate, and… this. This is a weird, curious little one-shot, which I chopped into three chapters for manageability.
For those of you who reach the end of this chapter and go, what the hell?, well, that was pretty much the point. It will all make sense soon, I promise.
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"- and expect heavy showers on Thursday. Now we go over to Johnny Rattecks for sports. Johnny?"
Eyes half-closed, gaze blank, blink at the distant noise. A body sitting bolt upright sways, a bit, like a sapling in a breeze.
"Thanks, Frank. Now, we had quite the shock in baseball today. The KC Royals finally broke their stalemate with the Yankees and emerged the victors with a surprise home run..."
The noise continues on, shot through with static and just loud enough to hear. There's something wrong, with the words, with the voice itself, but the brain just can't engage. The darkness beckons and the eyes slide almost completely shut, all light blocked out save a faint smudge. The noise is going, too, and the body couldn't move of its own volition, even if jabbed by a cattle prod, and it's just too much effort-
DING!
He jumps, heart hammering, and it all comes snapping back into place with a Doppler echo. He twists in his seat to track the noise.
"Order up!" an old woman calls out in a crow's voice, and the ding comes again. He turns the other way and finds her behind the chest-high counter, spatula in one hand. She sees him, and scowls, and whacks the countertop bell with her spatula for the third time.
"This is self-service, buster," she tells him. "You wanna eat, come and get it."
He blinks at her- a little old woman with a face like a crumpled brown paper bag and candy-red hair tamed into severe curls by enough hair spray to hold it in place until the year 2020- and she bashes the bell again. Every muscle contracts at the noise, so jarring and bright in this dusty, sleepy world.
"Please stop that," he says, his voice smooth and refined compared to hers. Her scowl deepens.
"What, you English?" she asks disdainfully, and he pauses. When he doesn't answer, she assumes what appears to be the worse and rolls her eyes. "Figures."
The truth of it is foggy, in his mind- some part of him knows the word, is shouting it. 'English' is wrong, he knows, but he just can't seem to connect with the part of his brain that knows the right word.
"Well, Your Majesty, we don't got no tea and crumpets. You get what you get and you'll take it and that's that." She waves her spatula at him, then turns and heads back into the bright-lit room beyond. He blinks again, trying to puzzle out what that was supposed to mean.
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"I wouldn't worry about her," the man says as he sets the plate down on the table and slides it over. "She probably remembers the American Revolution." He sits down in the booth across the table and leans forward a bit, smiling a harmless charming smile. His eyes are very blue.
"What is this?" he asks, looking at the plate in front of him, and the stranger shrugs.
"Hamburger and chips," he says, snaking a hand out to steal one of the latter. "Or fries, as the case may be. When in Rome."
An unappetizing, congealing pile of grease is what it is, no matter what city they're in. "And I have to eat it?"
"Can't hurt," the stranger says. "Probably won't make a difference."
Those eyes are locked on his left shoulder. He looks over to find his clothes- what was once a nice suit- shredded and bloody in the hollow between collarbone and shoulder. The skin underneath is intact and unmarked.
"Where am I?" he finally asks, since this man is the friendlier of the two people he's encountered so far. Another chip- fry- is stolen as the stranger gives this a moment of thought.
"What do you remember?" he counters.
"About what?"
"Anything." Those blue eyes lock on his and he can't break contact, can barely breathe for the intensity. "Everything."
There will be rain on Thursday, and Johnny Rattecks does the sports, he wants to say. This is not the right answer, he knows, but it's as far back as it goes. He should be panicking over this. Instead he takes a sip of water from the glass the stranger had brought over.
He shakes his head a bit. "Sorry."
"Nothing? Not even me?" The teasing tone is forced. It sounds wrong.
"Who are you?" he asks.
The stranger's eyes darken, with pain, with concern, then with anger, which takes over quickly and shuts out everything else. He pushes the mostly untouched plate of food aside and leans closer.
"All right," he says, quiet and urgent. "Two things you have to do. One is not talk about me, to anyone. They can't know I'm here."
"What happens if they find out?" he asks.
"I don't know," the stranger admits. "Nothing good, I can promise you that." Once again those eyes shift to his shoulder, to the injuries he doesn't have, and the implication is clear enough.
"And the other thing?" he prompts, because the crow could return at any second. A hand wraps around his wrist and holds on tight, tight enough to bruise.
Which, he realizes later, is the point. A physical reminder, should all else fail.
"Remember," he says. "It doesn't matter how, just remember. Everything and anything. Everything you can."
He looks as if he's going to say something else, but there's a sudden loud clattering from the room beyond the counter, presumably the kitchen. They both look over, hearing the crow cursing, and she appears briefly
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The plate is sitting on the table in front of him. It's been picked at, and he can feel a corresponding rolling in his gut. He'd eaten too much of this slop.
A young man, head shaved bare and ears gaged with holes large enough for a tin can, comes out of the back room. He's wearing an apron that was once white and carrying a wet dishcloth and a plastic tub. The plate and water glass go in the tub, the table gets a perfunctory wipe with the cloth.
He takes stock, finally, as the boy works.
It's a roadside diner straight out of Americana. There are a dozen or so booths, cracked vinyl that might have once been red, and twice as many tables with wobbly-looking chairs. There's the normal kitsch on the walls, random pictures and ugly paintings and movie posters and a framed white sports jersey, number 58, complete with grass stains. The counter dominates the far wall, the kitchen beyond. Above it is a sign that says Rudy's Roadside Grill. Tucked away in the right corner of the back wall is the swinging door the boy had come through. A rectangular sticker, slightly crooked, pronounces the bathrooms to be through that door.
A television is on a shelf in the corner behind him, which is why he can hear but not see it. He turns to look and finds the local news has given way to Jeopardy
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He finds a marker at the cash register, a fat black specimen, and goes over to the framed jersey. It comes off the wall easily enough, and as he expects, the wall behind is the same unappealing orangey red as the rest of the diner. This patch is cleaner, however, with none of the grunge and grime that forms a solid layer of grey over everything that doesn't move in here.
There is no front door, he has long since noticed. And the wide windows along the front wall, all of which show grey skies and a barren stretch of road with a tumbleweed or two, look like they're painted on the walls.
REMEMBER
he writes on the wall, at the top of the clean spot. There he stops, and realizes his earliest memories have already gone fuzzy. Which is impossible, since he'd only woken up here a few- a little-
Rain on Thursday, he writes. It takes a moment's thought to remember which day.
Sports with Johnny is next. He can't remember the last name, or the names of the teams Johnny had been talking about. Baseball. Surprise win, home run.
Crow. No tea and crumpets, Your Majesty.
Hamburger and ch- fries.
Boy with apron and big ears.
Jeopardy. Final question, invention of stainless steel.
Here he pauses. He can't lose the memory of those keen eyes, but he doesn't dare write anything about them on the wall for all and sundry to see. Instead, after a moment's consideration, he takes off his jacket and pushes his shirt sleeve up. On his left forearm, just before the wrist, he writes blue eyes. He gives the marker ink a moment to dry, then puts his jacket back on. It doesn't quite cover the words completely, but it's close enough.
"She's not gonna like that," the boy says, when he comes out a bit later and sees the wall.
He hangs the jersey up over it and looks back at the boy, who shrugs and goes about wiping down the seats of the booths
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"You really need to stop doing that."
"Doing what?" he asks, leaning against the swinging door. It opens in as well as out, but either way it will give them warning that someone's coming.
"Losing time," the stranger says. "You haven't noticed?" Eyebrows high, chin tucked against his chest. He looks like a little boy, and yet somehow ageless.
"Time is… weird, here," he admits. Everything is weird here. "But I know what you mean. Everything is running together. There's never a moment where nothing is happening."
"Like you're skipping the boring bits," the stranger agrees.
"How do I stop that?" he asks, and the stranger shrugs.
"Focus on the moment," he offers. "Do something to keep yourself grounded right here, right now. If it seems like it's going to, you know…" Here he makes an entirely useless hand gesture.
"Skip?" he tries, because there's no better word. The stranger nods slightly, shifts his weight and folds his arms across his chest.
"Do anything. Count your heartbeat. Walk laps around the room. Just don't let yourself keep skipping."
He's long past the point of needing to ask what if. He nods instead, looking over the diner.
A hand catches his, pulls his arm up and gently pushes his sleeve back. He watches as blue eyes focus on the words written on his wrist, then flick up to his face, one brow raised questioningly.
"You said I shouldn't tell the others about you," he explains, a bit sheepish and annoyed at himself for it. "I assumed that meant writing about you on the wall wasn't allowed."
The stranger sweeps his gaze around the room quickly, then back to him. The questioning look hasn't budged.
He tugs his hand free, moves over to the jersey and pushes it aside. The stranger studies the list, smiling softly.
"And they were worried," he says, almost a whisper.
"Who?" he asks, and the question is waved off. It's not surprising- no names, he'd picked up on that pattern right off.
The stranger beckons him back over to the swinging door, and he goes without thought.
"You're not going to forget about me," the stranger tells him. "Not again. I won't let it happen."
And because he said so, it is fact. He doesn't seem the compromising sort.
"Who are these people?" he asks, tentative, not sure how to respond to that. The stranger's blue eyes skip to the door and he sighs.
"Nobody, yet," he says. "An opportunity. A placeholder." He shrugs. "An open doorway."
There's a menace in his words, a deep and abiding danger. He cannot help, those words say. If whatever is on the other side comes through those doorways, he can do nothing.
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