A few months ago I read the Laundromat 'verse by OzoneCologne and thought it was excellent. Jump to early May, when I put out the Coach Benny short, and I got to thinking: how could I continue to write when I had limited writing time? That's when I started this story, with the thought that I could write something episodic on my phone, have it be in snippets that it wouldn't be a big deal if my phone ate a chunk of it (I lost hours of work to my phone being stupid last year so I'm really paranoid about that...).
Meanwhile, I've always wanted to write a sci-fi verse. I've read...none? Nothing long, anyway.
So, this is the plan: this is my "I don't actually have time to write" story. I'm going to write it in short chapters, only on my phone at times when I'm not ABLE to do other writing. I have no idea how often stories will come out or anything, but here's the first snippet, and the rest will happen when it happens. I have only a vague idea where things are going...but I do have a vague idea...
"That's not the price we agreed on," Dean said with false calm, trying to keep his indignation under wraps. He didn't even give much of a shit about the double cross - he expected it from a low life like Crowley - but he needed the fucking money to keep his ship in the sky.
"Well, it's what you're getting," said Crowley, lips curling into a smug smile as he continued, "unless you think anyone else on this intergalactic slag heap will buy your rubbish merchandise?"
Fuck. That's why Crowley wanted to meet on fucking Houndstooth. Charlie had said it sounded fishy and Dean was the fricken idiot who ignored her and now he had 100 gross of self-sealing stem bolts, another cargo lined up to fill his holds, and no hope of finding another buyer. Crowley's new offering price wouldn't enable Dean to break even, much less turn a profit. Fuckity fucking fucksticks.
"Pleasure doing business with you, Winchester," Crowley smirked, correctly interpreting Dean's silence as a concession of defeat. "Please have your helper monkeys deliver my stem bolts to the cargo hold of the King of Hell." Most fucking pretentious name for a ship ever.
"You know by screwing me over you guarantee we're never doing business again," Dean muttered. He didn't sound petulant. Dean mother fucking Winchester did not do petulant.
"Of course we won't," sneered Crowley, tone making it clear that he thought nothing of the kind. The asshole clearly thought that Dean was desperate enough that he'd come crawling back next time Crowley called.
The asshole was almost certainly right.
Grinding his teeth, Dean didn't dignify Crowley with a goodbye, turning on a heel and walking out of the bar, suitcase of payment in hand. Benny stood outside, watching across the street where a neon sign promised dancing girls from 20 different species. He started and grinned sheepishly when Dean nudged him to attentiveness.
"Hey, brother, all done?"
"Yeah," Dean replied sourly.
"Does that mean we can leave this shit hole?" Benny managed to sound disappointed at the prospect.
"No such luck," grumbled Dean. "Crowley fucked me."
"I thought you broke up with him years ago," said Benny, frowning.
"Ha. Ha ha ha. You're a real fucking comedian," Dean snapped angrily. Benny broke into a renewed smile, proud of his bullshit sense of humor. "Come on, helper monkey, let's get his shit bolts transferred to his shit ship so we can figure out a way to get out of this shit hole."
"Mixing me up with the humans again?" Benny said with a toothy grin. "Unlike you mammals I'm not evolved from a tree dweller."
"Trust me, even if I wanted to forget the hundred bags of blood in the ships fridge are a constant, disgusting reminder," Dean said wryly.
"If they gross you out-"
"We've been over this, Benny. You can't suck the crews' blood," snapped Dean.
"The scars on your neck say otherwise," smirked Benny.
"Benny..." Dean said warningly. He and Benny had fun once upon a time but it was over now; Dean couldn't risk passing out from blood loss on the bridge again, and Benny didn't enjoy sex that didn't involve blood play. He wasn't sorry he'd given it a try, even if it had proved to not be his "thing." There were so many species and so many ways to be intimate, Dean had never seen any point in restricting himself to his fellow monkey descendants.
"I know, brother, I know - s'all good."
As they spoke, they walked through the bustling streets of the port. Houndstooth was the ass-end of forever, low on regulations, high on corruption. When Dean didn't visit for a while he missed the ease of doing business in a place where no one gave a shit what anyone else did as long as everyone minded their own fucking business. That nostalgia usually lasted until about ten minutes after arriving, by which time Dean had needed to bribe a half dozen different officials just to clear the laughable excuse of an inspection that passed as customs. It was harder to do business on the Central Planets but at least he didn't have to buy off the same douche bags over and over. If this were Lawrence or Sioux Falls or Lexington, Crowley could never have gotten away with his double cross because they'd have had a fucking contract.
It was a moot fucking point regardless. There was a warrant out for Dean's arrest in the Central Worlds. He couldn't go back.
A rowdy bar fight spilled out into the streets. A furtive rugarou thrust a purse in his direction and chirped "copy handbag?" A pawn shop's glowing holographic sign promised the best price for gold in the sector. A woman slumped on the sidewalk bearing a sign claiming she was an experienced long haul shipper looking for work, a berth on a ship to take her anywhere else in the universe. The sound of laughter spilled out of the open windows of a gaudily painted flop house. The streets teemed with the crewmen and crewwomen and crew-gender-indeterminate of every ship docked at the city, crowding the asphalt streets so densely that the anti-grav trucks that moved the majority of the local cargo could scarce make headway. Houndstooth produced nothing of its own; it was a way point, a cross roads for a number of Consortium trade routes and a base of operations for the pirates who preyed on legitimate intergalactic trade. Every single grain of rice, every nail, every rock, every drop of water had to be imported, and there was hardly a person there who wasn't merely a visiting transient.
The Impala was berthed at one of the nicer space docks in the asteroid colony: clean, well maintained, expensive and - most importantly - secure. The last time Dean had come to Houndstooth, some jackass had broken in and siphoned off his fuel right after he refilled it. The premium spot was worth it to prevent that happening again.
Fuck, why did he decide to return to this dung heap? Never again.
"Um..." A tall, human-appearing, male-appearing person seemed to be torn between getting Dean's attention and disappearing into the concrete stonework behind him. Though he was obviously broad and built, he was hunched in a ratty trench coat, slumped to minimize his appearance, clearly determined to draw as little attention to himself as possible.
"Not interested, buddy," said Dean dismissively, not taking the bait. Whatever pitch the wallflower had in store for him, Dean wasn't interested.
With a flinch and a grimace, the man looked up and Dean was arrested by inhumanly bright blue eyes and a desperate, pleading expression on a face that would be handsome were it not so gaunt and overgrown with a patchy beard. "Please." The stranger's voice was low, rough, quiet, and intense. "I can pay."
"Oh," Dean said dumbly. He broke into a smile. "Now you're talking my language. What can I do for you?"
"I need to get off the planet, no questions asked."
"No questions asked is my middle name," joked Dean.
"Really?" the man looked intensely confused. Benny laughed uproariously, and that confused look was turned towards him.
"What the fuck kind of name would that be?" Dean grinned. Leaning in conspiratorially, he said, "it's Michael."
"Come on, brother, we've got work to do," Benny said. "I'm not carryin' all the bolts so you can flirt with tall, dark, and likely to get us arrested."
"Please!" the man implored, stepping out of the shadows. Though Dean couldn't have put his finger on why, he could feel the distress oozing from the man, sense it in his dilapidated, neglected appearance and the sad cast of his eyes.
"Where are you tryin' to go, stranger?" Dean asked, warily curious.
"Dean..."
"Anywhere. Anywhere but here. I have money," the man fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a credit chip. "Is 50,000 credits enough?"
Benny whistled, eyes going wide, and Dean goggled at the humanoid. It was a ludicrous sum, more than Crowley was paying for his fucking stem bolts. Every sensible part of Dean screamed that this was a terrible idea, but Dean kept cycling back to the simple fact that he and his crew were grounded on this forsaken slag rock unless Dean could come up with some money, and fast. The longer they stayed, the more fees and bribes would accrue and the more fucked they'd be. Experience had taught Dean that a deal too good to be true certainly was. Yet, there was something about this person that drew Dean.
"Why me?" Dean asked after an unreasonably long silence that had Benny bouncing impatiently on his heels.
"Tell me you're not seriously considerin' this!" Benny erupted.
"You feel it, don't you?" whispered the stranger urgently. "Please. It has to be you. This is hell and you're my only way out."
Nodding slowly, wondering what exactly he was agreeing to, why he was agreeing to it, Dean held out his hand. "You've got yourself a deal...?"
"Call me Cas." The man's shoulders slumped in relief as he shook Dean's hand with a strong grip.
"Pleasure doing business with you, Cas. If you'll just follow us, I have a feeling you'd like to get out of the street."
"Thank you - thank you so much - I can't thank you enough."
"Yeah you can - about 50,000 times, by my count." Dean grinned. Snap decision made, and he felt damn good about it. Every once and a while he got a hunch like this and they hadn't steered him wrong yet.
Except the time he'd ended up in prison on Baltimore. Or the time the lucrative mystery cargo had turned out to be rare fruits from Burkittsville that rotted to nothing halfway through the journey, his profits decomposing to stink up his holds for months. And then there was the gig that was the reason Sammy still wasn't talking to him.
But aside from those times...and maybe one or two others...Dean's instincts had never steered him wrong. Waving off Benny's incredulous look with a dismissive flick of the wrist, Dean gestured with his other hand for Cas to follow.
"Welcome aboard the Impala, Cas. You just let me know if there's anything - anything at all - I can do for you."
Cas stared at him with blank incomprehension of the innuendo. Benny rolled his eyes. And Dean felt the first twinge that hinted he might have another regret to add to his list.
Well, at least none of those times was ever boring.
No idea when I'll write more of this, I'm just screwing around really...