Grand Theft Auto
An Archwell Fanfic
Aimwell—had to leave in a bit of a hurry. I might be in touch. Don't hate me.
- Archer
Aimwell sets the note on the table and takes a step back. It was scrawled hap-hazard on the back of a soggy paper napkin—the unfinished product of a drunken highwayman who's been in the same place for a day too long.
Aimwell's eyes scan the bar, the doorway, the empty booths. The jukebox has stopped playing. He compulsively pulls a dime out of his back pocket and puts on the first Everly Brother's song he finds. Still little wobbly from the mystery booze he's been at for the past two hours, he staggers toward the bartender. "Where'd he go?"
Boniface glances up from his tankard. "What's that?"
"The man—the only other man in the bar, he was sitting right there." Aimwell points to their corner table.
"Beats me, as the saying is," Boni says, pouring another shot for himself. A bit of cheap (if not home-brewed) whiskey sloshes onto the already sticky counter. Aimwell grabs the shot and throws it back without a second thought, then stumbles for the door.
He vaguely hears Boniface mumble, "'At's on your tab, as the saying is," but it's muffled by the distorted whirring of an old engine. In strange state of panic, Aimwell rushes into the gravel parking lot and draws his pistol.
"Archer!" He yells as a '59 Chevrolet screeches out of the Inn's parking lot. "Archer! Get back here—son of a—" He shoots twice in the general vicinity of the car's wheels and misses. "THAT'S MY CAR!" The weapon falls to his side. "That's my fucking car!" Aimwell angrily kicks up some gravel before finding a seat on the curb. "My car—mine…" He always was a bit of a pouty drunk. He'd be the first to admit it.
Mine mine mine my car mine, he thinks, even though that wasn't entirely true. The double A's were so financially bound to each other it was hard to make out one's funds from another's.
"Where'd the other one go?" slurs a voice from behind him.
Aimwell turns to find a man named Sullen slumped in the doorway. "Why would I care? Dick stole my car," Aimwell mumbles, struggling to form a cohesive second thought beyond the fact that his car is now M.I.A.
"Why don't you call the cops?" Sullen asks. "Might track him down."
Even in his state of drunken panic, Aimwell knows damn well he can't call the cops. Cops mean licenses and registrations and paperwork and probably jail for the both of them.
"Don't got a phone," Aimwell replies.
"The station's half a mile down the way."
"You think I could walk a straight line for a half a minute, let alone half a mile?"
Sullen sulks in the shadow of the doorway. "Humph." He sips from his flask for a while. "Why'd he ditch?"
"Why the hell would I be screaming after him if I knew why the hell he ditched, saucebox?"
"You must have some notion, friend—"
"I have a notion to floor you if you don't go inside and find yourself a dram, friend." Aimwell turns from Sullen determinedly and fixes his eyes on the road.
"As you like," Sullen murmurs before slinking back into Boniface's bar.
Aimwell's about to turn in for the night when he sees what he thinks to be a motorcyclist's headlight in the distance. As it comes closer, he finds it's just a car with one of its light's burnt out. And that's when he sees that it is, in fact, his '59 Chevrolet.
Archer pulls into the parking lot a great deal slower than when he was pulling out (pun intended), as though he'd been driving five below all the way back to Aimwell—as though he had nothing better to do than leave him lolling about Boniface's alone at two in the morning.
As Archer steps from the parked car, Aimwell's anger surges anew. He draws his pistol instinctively, pointing it at Archer.
"Whoa!" Archer catapults over the hood of the car, ducking to avoid the barrel of the gun. "Whoa whoa whoa buddy old pal—"
"Don't 'buddy pal' me, bozo," Aimwell spits. "What was that note? Why? Where were you? What were you—?"
"None of your goddamn business, mom," Archer laughs acidically.
"I think I have a right to know if—"
"It's nothing important, Jesus Christ, can we just go inside?"
"But—but I—"
"Please?" Archer sticks his head up cautiously from behind the car, pouting like a lost puppy.
Aimwell sighs and stows his gun away. "Mkay."
Archer tries to help Aimwell walk steadily, an aid which Aimwell refuses stubbornly.
"Stole my car," Aimwell mutters as they find their way into the bar.
Then again, Archer steals an awful lot of things.