tebtosca

Title: The Johnnie Walker Blues
Character: Rufus Turner gen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 645
Warnings: Spoilers for all Rufus episodes
Disclaimer: Don't own, still broke
Summary: When the burn is both too much and not enough

Notes: inspired by the Rufus theme week over at

all_spn and because Rufus Turner is my one true love

The first time Rufus Turner ever took a sip of Johnnie Walker Blue, he was twenty-two and working his first big job. Clean headshot took out the ghoul harassing the owner of the glittziest lounge this side of the Mississippi, and said owner was relieved enough to pull him into the backroom after closing to teach him about the finer things in life. Rufus grinned wide when the man pulled a bottle of Blue out of his desk and laid a perfectly rolled Cuban down in front of him. Rufus was dirty and smelled like musk and bits of ghoul brains, but the owner had just smiled in return and pushed the crystal tumbler next to the cigar and nodded at it. Rufus took in the first big gulp and promptly started choking. The owner just laughed without malice and patted him on the back until he recovered.

++++++

When Rufus met the woman he ended up loving, it was like he was a blind man who suddenly opened his eyes and saw the sun. Radiant and overwhelming and so goddamn beautiful in its audacity that at first he hadn’t known whether he could live up to it. But when she smiled shyly at him from behind the grandiose door of her parents’ house in Lincoln, Nebraska and led him into the den to meet her father, Rufus knew it was worth it. He pulled a bottle of Blue from behind his back and presented it to the man he most needed to impress. Rufus had hustled two hours worth of pool at a dive bar two towns over to afford it, but it was worth every single cent when her daddy took the bottle out of his hands and turned around to hide his half smile.

++++++

Bob Singer fucked up. Hadn’t meant to, but he had. The only woman Rufus ever loved paid for it. Rufus looked at him and he imagined that his own face mirrored the one that Ellen Harvelle wore the first time someone mentioned John Winchester after Bill died. The sorrow on Bob’s face, however, made it hard for Rufus to breathe, so he fled.

++++++

That night Rufus sat in a rundown motel room in Omaha with a bottle of the cheapest whisky he could find. It felt like battery acid going down and that was exactly what he wanted. He wanted it to hurt, to sizzle his tongue and throat and gullet. He wanted something pouring down his throat that could try and match the disgust and pain coating his insides. It didn’t work; nothing could match that kind of trauma. But the effort was there, and the next day when he threw the entire bottle back up again all over himself and the puke green carpeting and the musty old bedspread, it felt almost like a reverse communion.

++++++

Rufus could never forget, would never forgive. But as Bob showed up at his door eight weeks later and held out the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, Rufus took it in his calloused hand and poured them each a glass.

The Blue went down smooth. It still burned the cords going down, but it was a good burn. The burn of flushed cheeks from that first kiss. The burn of that first push into slick wet tightness that felt like a promise. The burn of knowing that only one gal would ever be enough.

Bob nursed the glass. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to. Just sat with Rufus until the bottle was gone and the pain ebbed, a sense of grief and history shared that went beyond anything that might have happened.

“This is good,” Rufus stated, holding the empty bottle like the white flag that it was. Bob glanced at him, his face showing that he understood.

“Yeah, it sure is, ain’t it,” Bob nodded and the burn cooled.