Welcome to Rocky's

Welcome to Rocky's

A Supernatural story by Jennie @DeanIsntFine
Featuring Dean Winchester @DWImpala67

This is the second of my VBF stories, featuring my best fictional friend. It is set in the winter hiatus of Season 14, after "The Spear." To read the others, click:
Part 1: "VBF"
Part 3: "Last Call"
Part 4: "Nourished"

The door was open, just a crack.

I pushed it, and bells rang above my head as I entered.

“Hey, welcome to Rocky’s!” the friendly bartender boomed. “What can I getcha?”

My breath caught as I saw him, wiping a glass behind the bar.

I quickly cleared my throat and answered as I crossed the scarred, plank wood floor. “You have anything fancy, maybe with a tiny umbrella?” I asked.

He eyed me warily -- but with a hint of amusement. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

“Um, no,” he said, gesturing broadly around the establishment. “If you want fancy, you’re in the wrong place, lady.”

“No, no,” I said. I sat, staking my claim to one of the red vinyl-covered bar stools. I gripped the padded bar rail, tight. “I’m exactly where I need to be.”

As he polished, I checked out the oddly narrow selection of beers on tap. “Cosmic Cowboy?” I asked.

“The house specialty!” he said brightly -- he seemed at ease, in his element. He proceeded to pour me a perfect draft, with less than an inch of foam.

I sipped, and tried not to grimace. I hated beer, and he knew it. Or, he once did, anyway.

I sipped again, screwed up my courage. “So, you’re… Rocky?”

The bartender laughed, and the red-hooded lights above the bar couldn’t dim that thousand-watt smile.

“Me? Hell, no. I’m Dean.” He reached over the bar to shake my hand. I squeezed as hard as I could to match his kung-fu grip.

He chuckled again, and resumed polishing the barware. “Rocky?” he said. “He’s a tough guy, seen a lot of knife fights. Been in a lot of scrapes, you know? That guy has some stories to tell, believe me. Nope. I’m just Dean.”

“Well, Just Dean, I’m Jennie.”

He studied me as the rag in his hand worked over the rim of another glass.

“You seem familiar,” he said. “Do we know each other?”

I felt my heart pinch in my chest, but I fought to keep my voice light.

“In my dreams, maybe,” I managed. Oh, God, he’s gonna think I’m hitting on him...

Then my gaze locked with his, and my composure cracked at last. His green eyes seemed dim, blank, clouded in the greasy red light from the fixtures overhead. I barely recognized my best friend.

“If you and I were friends, I think I’d remember,” I said, softly, my voice thick. “It seems like it'd be... quite an honor to know you, Dean.”

“Me? No…” he said, and the pace of his polishing quickened. “I'm just a guy slinging suds. I'm nobody special.”

“Well, I beg to differ,” I said, and raised my glass to him. I took another sip of (blech!) Cosmic Cowboy.

“So, Jennie…” he said. “Where are you from?”

“Impossibly far, ridiculously close...” I muttered into my glass.

“Come again?”

“St. Louis,” I said, more clearly, as I looked up from my beer.

“Ahhh, Gateway to the West. Been there a time or two.”

“Yeah? Gateway to the Weird, more like,” I said. I took a big gulp of Cosmic Cowboy, and tried to inject a bit of tipsy into my tone. “When you were there, did you ever meet a guy named James Frampton?” I asked.

He shook his head. I leaned in closer, in confidence, and Dean, curious, matched my movements.

“He’s a cop,” I whispered, “who’s also a witch.” 

Dean leaned back, astonished. “No friggin’ way,” he said.

“Hand to God!” I said, downing the rest of my beer. I signaled Dean for another. “And have you ever heard of the St. Louis Suicide House?”

He frowned as he poured my second draft. “That sounds vaguely familiar,” he said.

“It should!” I barked, as drunkenly as I could muster. “Everybody who ever lived there killed themselves! They say a magic box in the basement made them do it.”

I watched carefully for his reaction. Again, that beautiful face twisted into a frown, and he looked off into the middle distance, as if trying to catch a glimpse of a fleeting memory.

“There’s no such thing… as a magic box,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Right?” He looked to me as if desperate for confirmation.

I put both hands up. “Hey, buddy, I’m just telling you what I heard.”

I sipped in silence for a minute, and he kept polishing, but I could tell he was distracted. He kept looking around Rocky’s, letting his gaze linger on the glass-block windows, the pay phone on the wall, the taxidermied moose head. For the first time since I’d stepped through the door, he seemed unsure of where he was. Or why he was there.

I was honestly terrified to keep poking at his memories like this. I had no idea what effect it might have.

I had plenty of St. Louis arrows left in my quiver, though, tall tales that could pass for idle -- if odd -- bar chatter. The shapeshifter murder case, the notorious exorcisms -- hell, we could even wax poetic about the burgers at Connor’s Diner.

Then I could casually mention the ensuing massacre there, committed by monsters wearing two very handsome faces.

But I figured I had one St. Louis story left that might best get at the root of our current predicament. I steeled myself, then took my shot.

“Ooh, here’s a good one,” I said. “Did you hear about the time our archbishop went crazy and killed everyone on his staff?” I downed the rest of my second beer in a gulp.

Dean looked at me as if I had two heads.

I held up my empty glass to signal for another.

“They say he was possessed by the devil,” I said, as nonchalantly as possible.

I thought I could see something -- a glimmer of recognition, maybe? Did the light spark again in those bottle-green eyes? It was too much to hope for, but I held my breath just the same.

Dean started pouring my third Cosmic Cowboy. He seemed entranced as he watched the beer flow into the glass, the perfect head forming on top.

When he looked up, my stomach sank. His eyes were hooded and dark again, and he barked out a laugh.

“Now, that's just nutty," he said. All at once, he was just a jovial Joe again, a nobody behind a bar, slinging suds.

“When people are scared, they’ll believe anything,” he went on, placing my beer in front of me. He poured a short glass of whisky for himself.

“Take God, for example,” he said. “God doesn't give a crap about us. He's not going to swoop in and save us anytime soon, that's for sure... No offense.”

“None taken,” I sighed. “I believe in God... but I'm not entirely sure he still believes in us.”

“I'll drink to that,” Dean said, and downed his whisky.

As I nursed the third beer, feeling defeated, I looked around Rocky’s. “Speaking of ‘no offense,’ Dean, it seems pretty dead in here.”

He looked around too, as if noticing the emptiness for the first time. “Yeah, that’s weird. Usually there's so much going on, I can hardly hear myself think.”

“All this nothing,” I ventured, “seems kinda bad for business.”

He poured himself another whisky. “Yeah, well… That’s Rocky’s problem, right?” He reached out and clinked his glass against mine.

He took a sip. “To tell you the truth, Rocky has been kinda hands-off lately,” he said, gazing over at the door, still open, just a crack. “Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I saw him in here.” He polished off his second drink. “Ah, well. He must be off looking for trouble.”

“But not you, right?” I said.

“Not me what?”

“You don't go looking for trouble?”

“Me? Hell, no. I like it right here,” he said cheerily, his arms spread wide.

“Sure, I listen to the same five albums over and over,” he said, fingering an old cassette deck behind the bar. “But this guy never seems to mind.” He turned and gestured to a man in a hoodie slumped over the bar.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” Dean said. He looked honestly puzzled. “Never got his name.”

I finished my third beer and rose from the stool. I didn’t have to fake being dizzy, disconnected. The feeling had been plaguing me for weeks, since before Kansas City, and here it was, back with a vengeance.

I reached into my pocket and laid two twenties on the bar. “Dean, my friend,” I said, “this has been a blast. A Cosmic Cowboy-powered blast.”

He grinned with real delight -- I could see that the smug barback bastard had quickly figured out that I was quite the lightweight.

He shot out with a single finger gun. “Jennie, my friend, you be careful out there.”

I crossed the battered wood floor to the door, and put my hand on the nicked brass knob.

“This thing doesn’t close all the way, huh?” I asked Dean.

“Yeah, the frame is swollen so much that the door sticks open. I warned Rocky about it. Security risk, right?” For a moment, Dean got that faraway look in his eyes again. “But… he never could get it to close all the way.”

“Huh,” I said. “You know, open doors do let things in. Sometimes bad things. But they also make a handy way out. Should you ever want to leave Rocky’s, I mean.”

He picked up a glass and a rag and looked around the bar, as if considering that idea for the first time. And, for the first time since I’d walked in, he looked afraid.

My heart broke again, but I forced a smile.

“Have a great night, Dean. I hope I’ll see you real soon.” As I walked out, the bells sounded once more.

The bemused bartender, glass in hand, kept his eye on the door.