Authors Note: I was planning to work on my proper SPN and Sherlock fics tonight, but then I had this silly idea about Death wanting a burger and accidentally wrote this. Oops.
Hope you enjoy the nonsense!
~ Imogen
Ordinarily, Death waits for no one.
On this particular Tuesday though, he had been waiting for nearly forty-five minutes in a practically empty restaurant for a waitress to bring him his serving of deep fried onion rings and something the menu enthusiastically called a "heart attack special".
Behind him on the counter, a near-prehistoric CRT television sat, flickering blue and white as it struggled to keep hold of the one station it's antenna was capable of finding. An advertisement for discount Persian rugs found its way through the static in short bursts.
The crackle of TV snow somehow managed to make the screaming rug salesman even more obnoxious than usual, and with his arm on the back of the booth, Death turned to look at the screen with distaste. As if understanding it's mistake in irritating this particular customer, the television clicked itself off immediately, and he turned back, drumming his fingers over the vinyl cushion.
The Jackson County Biggerson's restaurant wasn't the most modern establishment you could find, and certainly not the cleanest, but it held a certain greasy-spoon charm that he found comforting. There was just something about sitting in a slightly uncomfortable booth and eating greasy food with copious amounts of cheese that called to him, and so whenever a day came about when he could let the reapers follow the plan laid out by Atropos without further instruction, he would make his way to the nearest diner he could find and sample the local junk food.
Death glanced around the restaurant. Surely one burger and some onion rings shouldn't take this long. There was only one other customer-a middle aged woman who appeared to have fallen asleep despite the coffee that sat in front of her-and when he had come in there had been three waitresses behind the counter and the sounds of two cooks talking in the kitchen.
Now there was silence.
"Hello?"
Death leaned out of his booth, trying to see into the kitchen. There was no response. He slid out and walked slowly toward the swinging doors. The woman by the window still sat with her head on her arms, folded over on the table. Frowning, Death pushed the doors open. They collided with something soft and heavy, and he pushed harder, stepping into the stuffy space.
"Huh."
He was sure that he hadn't sent any reapers to this particular neck of the woods today, and yet here he was, in the middle of a Biggerson's kitchen, surrounded by corpses. He stared around at them, one waitress facedown with her notepad stretched out in front of her, the two cooks slumped over one another in front of the hotplate, and another waitress with her head at an unnatural angle where her neck had connected with the edge of the counter as she fell. The third waitress had been acting as a doorstop.
"Huh," he said again, and looked back out into the restaurant at the woman who he now suspected was not so much sleeping as she was being dead.
He reached up one hand to scratch at his lower lip, wondering how exactly this had happened, when he noticed something glinting on his finger. The ring. He'd forgotten to take it off when he came in.
"What are we having today?" the waitress had asked.
"Heart attack special," he'd said.
Come to think of it, he had seen her rubbing her hand accross her throat as she walked away, and she had looked a little pale. But in comparison to his own pallour, she was practically tanned. Death sighed. Atropos was never going to let him hear the end of this.
His stomach growled, reminding him why he was here in the first place, and he turned his attention back to the kitchen. Most of the ingredients for his burger were already sitting on the counter, waiting to be assembled. Death stepped over the bodies and made his way to the hotplate, pulling a spare apron from a hook on the wall.
"I'll be damned," he said, "if everyone here gets a heart attack besides me."