When You're a Stranger 2/4
When You're a Stranger (2/4)
Singer Salvage turns out to be a sprawling junkyard with an old farmhouse in the center. Damien pulls the truck to a stop a respectful distance away, hauls Barnes out of the cab onto the hot, dry earth. "Barnes," he says. "Hey, B. I wish you could see this--this is Bobby Singer's place, Barnes. For real. It's just like in the books, it's--"
He trails away, because Barnes is looking around with a bright, wide-eyed expression that makes Damien think he's not actually taking any of this in, and that makes a lump lodge itself in Damien's throat. If anyone had told him a week ago that Bobby Singer was a real person and Damien was going to meet him--for real, in the flesh--he'd probably have gone into fits of joy. Now all he can think about is the tenuous hope that the man can put Barnes back to normal.
It's not that Barnes really needs any help walking, but Damien keeps a tight arm around his waist as they approach the house all the same. He feels all weird and exposed out here, and the shape of Barnes' lanky frame pressed against his side is something familiar for him to hang onto.
They make it about ten yards up the dusty path before a booming bark echoes across the empty yard, and hard on the heels of the sound is the most enormous dog Damien's ever seen in his life, a giant bundle of fur and drool and gnashing teeth. He yelps and stumbles back, pulling an unresisting Barnes along with him.
"Romney!" barks a voice from the porch. "Stand down."
Just like that, the snarling animal goes docile, turns its head and yips for all the world like it understands, and Damien blinks the sun and fear out of his eyes, squints up at the porch for his first look at Bobby Singer.
He's...not what Damien was expecting. Baseball cap pulled low over a sour, weathered face, layers of dingy flannel and denim, shotgun resting in his lap. He doesn't stand up when the dog bounces up the steps and nudges at his knee, and now Damien can see that what he thought was a lawn chair is actually a wheelchair. Bobby Singer must have notices the startled flick of his eyes, because he scowls.
"Don't get any bright ideas. I can more than look after myself, 'specially against a pair of morons like you two." He pats the gun in a way that isn't even remotely reassuring. "Get your asses up here."
Damien keeps one wary eye on the dog and edges closer, pulling Barnes along with him. "Sir, it's a very great honor--"
"Save it," Bobby Singer interrupts irritably. "That your boy? Bring him here where I can see him."
"This is Barnes," Damien says, climbing the steps. "I'm Damien."
"Yeah, Bert and Ernie," says Bobby cryptically. "I heard. You said she threw powder in his face?"
"Yeah."
"What in hell were you boys thinking, going into a haunted house like that?" Damien opens his mouth, flushing, and Bobby shakes his head. "Never mind. At this point, I don't give a rat's ass. Go ahead in."
It feels weird to guide Barnes past Bobby's wheelchair and into the cool, dusty house; it's not until after he's inside that Damien realizes that this way Bobby didn't ever have to present his back to them. Nobody's ever treated him like a threat before. It'd be kind of cool under any other circumstances at all.
"Aren't you worried we're possessed, or something?" Damien asks as Bobby wheels himself into the house. He snorts.
"No," he says, and jerks his head at the doorframe. Damien squints; there's a line of white powder that must be salt laid down in a deep groove across the doorstep, where the wheels from Bobby's chair won't mess it up.
Bobby's wheelchair. That sure as hell wasn't in the books, but there's probably no polite way to ask about it. So he doesn't. "Can you help Barnes?" he asks instead.
"Yep," says Bobby succinctly, and the relief that courses through Damien makes him weak in the knees. "Gonna take a while, though. Hope you don't have anyplace important to be for the next couple of days."
Barnes is more or less freelance, but Damien's down to his last week of vacation. And he so does not care. "No, sir. So, what do we--"
"You go in the living room and stay out of my way," Bobby says. "Your boyfriend comes in the kitchen so I can get a look at him." Damien hesitates, but Bobby's already wheeling away, and the last thing he wants to do is aggravate the man. He has a feeling it wouldn't take much, so he guides Barnes into the kitchen and folds him gently into a chair, untangles Barnes' fingers from his shirt, and backs out of the room.
***
Bobby's living room is huge, dusty, and cluttered. The red sunset streams in through dirty windows, illuminating stacks of ancient-looking books and incomprehensible tools all jumbled up incongruously with take-out boxes and beer bottles. In spite of the circumstances, Damien can't suppress a small thrill. It's real. It's all real, and that's Bobby Singer in the kitchen clattering around and muttering under his breath, and those are grimoires and books about demon-lore scattered across every available surface, and if he lifted the rug he's sure he'd see a devil's trap drawn underneath. His fingers itch to touch, but he shoves his hands resolutely in his pockets. Bobby can help them. No matter how curious he is, Damien is not going to screw that up.
Of course, that presents a problem because there's nowhere to sit down. There are stacks of hardcovers the size of paving stones and even a few things that look like scrolls jammed haphazardly together on the couch. It doesn't look organized in any sense of the word that Damien is familiar with, but it's probably better if he just keeps his hands to himself and stays standing.
There are photos over the cracked mantle-piece, some of them framed, some just shoved into the frame of a large, fly-spotted mirror. Looking at photos probably doesn't count as nosy, right?
He strains his ears toward the kitchen, but all he can hear is Barnes' low, ceaseless mumbling punctuated by the occasional clatter and the squeak of Bobby's wheels, so he picks his way carefully across the room to have a look.
Most of the framed photos are pictures of a pretty, dark-haired young woman who must be Bobby's wife. There's one in the center of her and Bobby. He's wearing a suit and looks impossibly young. The rest of the pictures are a hodgepodge of snapshots: Bobby feeding scraps to a big yellow dog, a scruffy dark-haired man cleaning a rifle on the front porch, and--
Holy shit.
The floor creaks beneath Damien's feet as he shifts closer. The dog-eared photo shows two teenage boys in baggy, faded jeans and t-shirts, standing on top of a beater car under the junkyard sign. The older one has the younger in a headlock and is grinning broadly at the camera. And the thing is, Damien recognizes him. He's skinny and freckled and a whole lot younger, but it's unmistakably the same guy.
It's Dean, actually. The real Dean.
Yeah, right. Okay, 'Dean'.
That same exact smile when Damien laughed at him in the parking lot outside the convention. That same bowlegged posture. And the younger one's face is obscured, but Damien can see sharp cheekbones and a huge, dimpled grin. Holy shit.
"Believe you've met Sam and Dean," Bobby says behind him, and Damien makes an undignified noise, spins around so fast he almost falls over.
"You knew--they're really--what?" he sputters.
Bobby looks amused. "Hand me that book there on the mantle. The red one."
Damien fumbles for the book. The old leather blinding is slippery in his hands, but that's not why he nearly drops it. "You mean they're real? Sam and Dean?"
Bobby's hat and beard conspire to obscure his face in the fading light, but Damien has no doubt that he's rolling his eyes. "'Course they're real." He maneuvers his wheelchair deftly past teetering stacks of books and into the kitchen and Damien follows him without even thinking about it, head spinning.
"No, but I mean--seriously?"
"You are deaf, aren't you? Turn on the light. The other switch, idjit."
The dingy yellow overhead sputters to life, and Damien is momentarily distracted by the sight of Barnes slumped loose-limbed in a kitchen chair. "Is he--"
"He's fine," Bobby says without looking up. "You're lucky she just had a weird sense of humor. Half the witches you run into will gut you alive and enjoy doing it."
He doesn't sound like he's joking at all. Damien gulps. "But he's going to be okay. Right?"
"Didn't I just say that? It's a babbling hex. Last time I saw one of these, Dean spent a week talking in dirty limericks." Bobby runs one knotted finger down a page of handwritten text as he speaks. "'Course, with him, it's hard to tell the difference sometimes. Here it is."
Dean. Jesus. He'd love to interrogate Bobby, but Barnes is stirring and mumbling again--still in Greek, damn it--and Damien goes to him, pulls the nearest chair close and grips Barnes' cold hand in his while Bobby putters around them, tossing incomprehensible ingredients into a shallow bowl. Finally, he stirs the mixture three times with his fingertip and hands the whole mess to Damien. "Get him to drink that. I need to wash my hands."
It looks absolutely awful and smells even worse, but Damien resolutely cups Barnes' chin in one gentle hand and pours the concoction into his mouth. Barnes chokes, spits, and makes a revolted face, but when he looks at Damien there's sense in his eyes.
"Hey," Damien says softly. "Are you okay?"
"Είμαι εντάξε," says Barnes morosely.
Crap.
"He's okay," Bobby says, rolling back into the kitchen and wiping his hands on a questionable-looking rag.
"I thought you said this would fix it!"
"Don't get snippy with me. Said it would take time, didn't I?"
"Right." Damien breathes out, slow and calming. "Sorry. So--"
"He'll need another dose in the morning." Bobby pauses, like he's considering something, then shrugs. "Should be sheets on the bed down the hall; I reckon you two could both use some sleep."
That's true enough. It's barely nine o'clock, not even completely dark out, but Barnes still looks half-dead and Damien's hardly slept in the past five days. "I don't know how to thank you," he says fervently.
"From what I hear, you two rescued that pair of chuckleheads back at that hotel," Bobby says evenly. "Suppose I owe you one. Now get to bed before I change my mind."
***
The sheets are musty, but clean. It didn't occur to Damien to bring pajamas or a change of clothes, but he really can't bring himself to care. Barnes strips down to his undershirt and boxers without instruction, which seems to be a good sign, and they curl together under the covers as the last of the light fades from the room.
"As soon as you can talk back, I am so going to yell at you," Damien murmurs, but he doesn't really mean it.
Barnes snorts and curves an arm over Damien's hip. "κάτσε ήσυχα."
A/N: Είμαι εντάξε means 'I'm alright'; κάτσε ήσυχα means 'shut up'. And I'm a little rusty on my Greek, so if I screwed up the translations, please correct me :).
Part 1 Part 3
Singer Salvage turns out to be a sprawling junkyard with an old farmhouse in the center. Damien pulls the truck to a stop a respectful distance away, hauls Barnes out of the cab onto the hot, dry earth. "Barnes," he says. "Hey, B. I wish you could see this--this is Bobby Singer's place, Barnes. For real. It's just like in the books, it's--"
He trails away, because Barnes is looking around with a bright, wide-eyed expression that makes Damien think he's not actually taking any of this in, and that makes a lump lodge itself in Damien's throat. If anyone had told him a week ago that Bobby Singer was a real person and Damien was going to meet him--for real, in the flesh--he'd probably have gone into fits of joy. Now all he can think about is the tenuous hope that the man can put Barnes back to normal.
It's not that Barnes really needs any help walking, but Damien keeps a tight arm around his waist as they approach the house all the same. He feels all weird and exposed out here, and the shape of Barnes' lanky frame pressed against his side is something familiar for him to hang onto.
They make it about ten yards up the dusty path before a booming bark echoes across the empty yard, and hard on the heels of the sound is the most enormous dog Damien's ever seen in his life, a giant bundle of fur and drool and gnashing teeth. He yelps and stumbles back, pulling an unresisting Barnes along with him.
"Romney!" barks a voice from the porch. "Stand down."
Just like that, the snarling animal goes docile, turns its head and yips for all the world like it understands, and Damien blinks the sun and fear out of his eyes, squints up at the porch for his first look at Bobby Singer.
He's...not what Damien was expecting. Baseball cap pulled low over a sour, weathered face, layers of dingy flannel and denim, shotgun resting in his lap. He doesn't stand up when the dog bounces up the steps and nudges at his knee, and now Damien can see that what he thought was a lawn chair is actually a wheelchair. Bobby Singer must have notices the startled flick of his eyes, because he scowls.
"Don't get any bright ideas. I can more than look after myself, 'specially against a pair of morons like you two." He pats the gun in a way that isn't even remotely reassuring. "Get your asses up here."
Damien keeps one wary eye on the dog and edges closer, pulling Barnes along with him. "Sir, it's a very great honor--"
"Save it," Bobby Singer interrupts irritably. "That your boy? Bring him here where I can see him."
"This is Barnes," Damien says, climbing the steps. "I'm Damien."
"Yeah, Bert and Ernie," says Bobby cryptically. "I heard. You said she threw powder in his face?"
"Yeah."
"What in hell were you boys thinking, going into a haunted house like that?" Damien opens his mouth, flushing, and Bobby shakes his head. "Never mind. At this point, I don't give a rat's ass. Go ahead in."
It feels weird to guide Barnes past Bobby's wheelchair and into the cool, dusty house; it's not until after he's inside that Damien realizes that this way Bobby didn't ever have to present his back to them. Nobody's ever treated him like a threat before. It'd be kind of cool under any other circumstances at all.
"Aren't you worried we're possessed, or something?" Damien asks as Bobby wheels himself into the house. He snorts.
"No," he says, and jerks his head at the doorframe. Damien squints; there's a line of white powder that must be salt laid down in a deep groove across the doorstep, where the wheels from Bobby's chair won't mess it up.
Bobby's wheelchair. That sure as hell wasn't in the books, but there's probably no polite way to ask about it. So he doesn't. "Can you help Barnes?" he asks instead.
"Yep," says Bobby succinctly, and the relief that courses through Damien makes him weak in the knees. "Gonna take a while, though. Hope you don't have anyplace important to be for the next couple of days."
Barnes is more or less freelance, but Damien's down to his last week of vacation. And he so does not care. "No, sir. So, what do we--"
"You go in the living room and stay out of my way," Bobby says. "Your boyfriend comes in the kitchen so I can get a look at him." Damien hesitates, but Bobby's already wheeling away, and the last thing he wants to do is aggravate the man. He has a feeling it wouldn't take much, so he guides Barnes into the kitchen and folds him gently into a chair, untangles Barnes' fingers from his shirt, and backs out of the room.
***
Bobby's living room is huge, dusty, and cluttered. The red sunset streams in through dirty windows, illuminating stacks of ancient-looking books and incomprehensible tools all jumbled up incongruously with take-out boxes and beer bottles. In spite of the circumstances, Damien can't suppress a small thrill. It's real. It's all real, and that's Bobby Singer in the kitchen clattering around and muttering under his breath, and those are grimoires and books about demon-lore scattered across every available surface, and if he lifted the rug he's sure he'd see a devil's trap drawn underneath. His fingers itch to touch, but he shoves his hands resolutely in his pockets. Bobby can help them. No matter how curious he is, Damien is not going to screw that up.
Of course, that presents a problem because there's nowhere to sit down. There are stacks of hardcovers the size of paving stones and even a few things that look like scrolls jammed haphazardly together on the couch. It doesn't look organized in any sense of the word that Damien is familiar with, but it's probably better if he just keeps his hands to himself and stays standing.
There are photos over the cracked mantle-piece, some of them framed, some just shoved into the frame of a large, fly-spotted mirror. Looking at photos probably doesn't count as nosy, right?
He strains his ears toward the kitchen, but all he can hear is Barnes' low, ceaseless mumbling punctuated by the occasional clatter and the squeak of Bobby's wheels, so he picks his way carefully across the room to have a look.
Most of the framed photos are pictures of a pretty, dark-haired young woman who must be Bobby's wife. There's one in the center of her and Bobby. He's wearing a suit and looks impossibly young. The rest of the pictures are a hodgepodge of snapshots: Bobby feeding scraps to a big yellow dog, a scruffy dark-haired man cleaning a rifle on the front porch, and--
Holy shit.
The floor creaks beneath Damien's feet as he shifts closer. The dog-eared photo shows two teenage boys in baggy, faded jeans and t-shirts, standing on top of a beater car under the junkyard sign. The older one has the younger in a headlock and is grinning broadly at the camera. And the thing is, Damien recognizes him. He's skinny and freckled and a whole lot younger, but it's unmistakably the same guy.
It's Dean, actually. The real Dean.
Yeah, right. Okay, 'Dean'.
That same exact smile when Damien laughed at him in the parking lot outside the convention. That same bowlegged posture. And the younger one's face is obscured, but Damien can see sharp cheekbones and a huge, dimpled grin. Holy shit.
"Believe you've met Sam and Dean," Bobby says behind him, and Damien makes an undignified noise, spins around so fast he almost falls over.
"You knew--they're really--what?" he sputters.
Bobby looks amused. "Hand me that book there on the mantle. The red one."
Damien fumbles for the book. The old leather blinding is slippery in his hands, but that's not why he nearly drops it. "You mean they're real? Sam and Dean?"
Bobby's hat and beard conspire to obscure his face in the fading light, but Damien has no doubt that he's rolling his eyes. "'Course they're real." He maneuvers his wheelchair deftly past teetering stacks of books and into the kitchen and Damien follows him without even thinking about it, head spinning.
"No, but I mean--seriously?"
"You are deaf, aren't you? Turn on the light. The other switch, idjit."
The dingy yellow overhead sputters to life, and Damien is momentarily distracted by the sight of Barnes slumped loose-limbed in a kitchen chair. "Is he--"
"He's fine," Bobby says without looking up. "You're lucky she just had a weird sense of humor. Half the witches you run into will gut you alive and enjoy doing it."
He doesn't sound like he's joking at all. Damien gulps. "But he's going to be okay. Right?"
"Didn't I just say that? It's a babbling hex. Last time I saw one of these, Dean spent a week talking in dirty limericks." Bobby runs one knotted finger down a page of handwritten text as he speaks. "'Course, with him, it's hard to tell the difference sometimes. Here it is."
Dean. Jesus. He'd love to interrogate Bobby, but Barnes is stirring and mumbling again--still in Greek, damn it--and Damien goes to him, pulls the nearest chair close and grips Barnes' cold hand in his while Bobby putters around them, tossing incomprehensible ingredients into a shallow bowl. Finally, he stirs the mixture three times with his fingertip and hands the whole mess to Damien. "Get him to drink that. I need to wash my hands."
It looks absolutely awful and smells even worse, but Damien resolutely cups Barnes' chin in one gentle hand and pours the concoction into his mouth. Barnes chokes, spits, and makes a revolted face, but when he looks at Damien there's sense in his eyes.
"Hey," Damien says softly. "Are you okay?"
"Είμαι εντάξε," says Barnes morosely.
Crap.
"He's okay," Bobby says, rolling back into the kitchen and wiping his hands on a questionable-looking rag.
"I thought you said this would fix it!"
"Don't get snippy with me. Said it would take time, didn't I?"
"Right." Damien breathes out, slow and calming. "Sorry. So--"
"He'll need another dose in the morning." Bobby pauses, like he's considering something, then shrugs. "Should be sheets on the bed down the hall; I reckon you two could both use some sleep."
That's true enough. It's barely nine o'clock, not even completely dark out, but Barnes still looks half-dead and Damien's hardly slept in the past five days. "I don't know how to thank you," he says fervently.
"From what I hear, you two rescued that pair of chuckleheads back at that hotel," Bobby says evenly. "Suppose I owe you one. Now get to bed before I change my mind."
***
The sheets are musty, but clean. It didn't occur to Damien to bring pajamas or a change of clothes, but he really can't bring himself to care. Barnes strips down to his undershirt and boxers without instruction, which seems to be a good sign, and they curl together under the covers as the last of the light fades from the room.
"As soon as you can talk back, I am so going to yell at you," Damien murmurs, but he doesn't really mean it.
Barnes snorts and curves an arm over Damien's hip. "κάτσε ήσυχα."
A/N: Είμαι εντάξε means 'I'm alright'; κάτσε ήσυχα means 'shut up'. And I'm a little rusty on my Greek, so if I screwed up the translations, please correct me :).
Part 1 Part 3