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Current music:	My Brightest Diamond
Entry tags:	fanfic, supernatural

Call It the Blues
Yes, it's (another) fanfic. Sigh. I'm posting it on my own journal this time because that seems easier.





Title: Call It the Blues
Author: utsusemia
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my crazy, crazy brain
Genre: Angsty
Characters: Sam, Dean
Rating: M
Spoilers: through 4.22
Wordcount: About 4,500
Summary: Trouble soon be over, sorrow will have an end. Dean plays the blues, and Sam only hates what he loves.
A/N: Wrote another fic. Look at that. A big thanks to anyone who commented and/or rec'd my last story. I really appreciate it.



#



The afternoon the frogs rain from the sky in Tupelo, Dean blasts Blind Willie Johnson, rolls down the windows and sings like he might be dragged to hell in the morning. Sam laughs and bites his lip against a sudden, simple joy. He looks out at the rolling soybean fields, the great tubes of hay, the fat crows that peck an armadillo carcass on the side of the road and open their sharp beaks at him. Not like they're screaming, like they recognize him, and can only call a warning.

"Dark was the night, cold was the ground?" Sam says. He won't turn around. He keeps his eyes on the crows.

"End of the world music," Dean says. He cranks it up.

"Should this make you so happy?"

Sam knows Dean shrugs, knows he smiles that secret smile. "Hey, if it's gonna happen, we should at least go in style."

"In a sixty seven Chevy Impala on a deserted stretch of highway in some shitkicker town, Mississippi?"

"Listening to Blind Willie Johnson."

"Listening to Blind Willie Johnson."

"Sounds about right."

Sam forgets himself, turns to look at his brother. Dean fucking drives with a swagger these days, forget walking. It's like Lucifer busts out of hell and all he can do is wake up every morning with a song in his goddamn heart. Metallica, probably.

Or Blind Willie Johnson.

"Isn't this kind of..."

"Awe-inspiring? Powerful? Classic?"

"Depressing?"

"That's why they call it the blues, Sammy."

The first frog hits their windshield with a wet smack. It's big, and it might have been green once, but all Sam can see is its soft white underbelly, wet and cracked like a hatching lizard egg. It leaves a thick red smear as it rolls onto the hood, intestines unspooling like ribbon behind it.

Dean stops the car. "Fuck," he says. "Fuck! I just washed her!"

"A frog just rained from the sky, Dean," Sam says. His voice is admirably calm.

"Dude, it's my fucking car. You think I didn't notice the intestinal juices? Those are a bitch to clean-"

"A frog," Sam ties again. "The sky."

"Sam, did you hit your head or some--oh."

"Yeah."

"Maybe it didn't rain. Doesn't look like rain to me." He points up at the mercilessly blue sky.

Dean climbs out of the car. Sam watches. He can still see the frog in the corner of his eye. Its legs are twitching. He hopes that doesn't mean it's still alive. He hopes that doesn't mean anything else.

Outside, something else hits the ground, too fast for either of them to see until its guts have splashed onto Dean's boots.

"Aw, hell!"

Dean jumps back in the car, slams the door. Blind Willie Johnson still hums that wordless song, nothing but a glass slide and a guitar between him and the devil.

"My boots," Dean mutters. "I have frog spleen all over my boots." He shakes his head and puts the car back into gear. "This fucking apocalypse!"

Sam has to laugh. "So much for going out in style, huh?"

Dean just looks over and Sam wonders what he sees: his little brother back in the passenger seat, ribbing him at any excuse, free from Ruby, free from demon blood. Back to normal-- for a Winchester, anyway.

"Nobody's fault but mine," Blind Willie Johnson sings. It's not a confession, it's an absolution.

An escape.



#



Lucifer is playing slide guitar in an old blues bar outside of New Orleans. It's called The Devil's Sign, of course it is, and damn if that fallen angel can't play himself some fucking steel string guitar. Dean's heart gets a little tight in his chest at the plaintive sigh of that high e string, at the sharp harmonies that swing into minors and sevenths as he taps out the opening chords of "Didn't It Rain." Which is ballsy enough that Dean can't help but feel impressed. It's been a week since he had to spend all night scrubbing frog intestines out of the windshield wiper, and he still hasn't stopped seeing articles about the apocalyptic amphibious rain that dumped approximately four point four tons of mostly-dead American bullfrogs over the greater Tupelo metro area.

"The devil sings gospel?" Sam says. He's leaning against the far wall and staring at the floor.

"The devil can cite scripture to his purpose," Dean quotes, one of those hundred aphorisms that Dad made him learn. Superstitions, folk wisdom. He never knew if half of them were true, but John was always cautious that way. Dean remembers a few months he lived in deathly terror of stepping on sidewalk cracks. "Your mother is dead, Dean," John had told him flatly, when he caught him doing it. "There's nothing left to break."

"Didn't it rain, brother, didn't it rain," Lucifer sings. The body he's possessing is tall and dusky skinned. The voice is deep, which he expected, and tender, which he didn't.

Sam pushes himself off the wall like he's climbing from his grave. "Are we going to do this or what?"

The slide is practically ringing, it's so clear against the strings. He looks at Sam, stares until his brother is forced to meet his eyes and Dean almost flinches. Sam looks like someone has just sliced open his wrists and it's the best thing that's ever happened to him. He doesn't understand how someone can look so grateful and miserable all at once.

"Come on, Sammy," he says, and clears his throat. "We've gotta at least hear the solo."

Sam sighs, but he waits. Too soon, the last notes fade into the taut silence.

"Hey, buddy!" Dean calls out. The club is small, but it's packed. A few people turn to him as he pushes his way to the front. Some just frown, others shout. No one does more than that. Maybe because Lucifer smiles broadly at them from the stage, and his eyes have flashed angel-white and they all know, even if they won't acknowledge it, that the man they've come to see isn't really human.

"So boys," he says, "you found me."

Dean grins, feels Sam's presence beside him like a limb. "Weren't exactly hard to find, Luce."

"And what would the infamous Winchester brothers want from the devil? Eternal life? Perfect slide guitar technique? Seventy-two dirty whores?"

"Tempting," Dean says, "but no."

"Curious. What, then?"

It's Sam who answers. Dean thought Sam didn't understand the blues, but of course he does. It's right there in his voice-- all that love and all that pain, everything that escapes when he looks at the creature he freed.

"Tell us how to kill an angel," Sam says.

Dean thinks of John again, for some reason. Thinks about the year after the fire, and all the times he was nearly run over from walking in the middle of the road. Thinks about his Dad's talk and the first time he deliberately stepped on a sidewalk crack.

Not, it's just a story. Just, there's nothing left to break.



#



They sit on the back of the Chevy-- Dean knocks back a piss-warm PBR and Sam cleans his sawed-off. They're waiting on angels. Like always.

Castiel insisted on this abandoned factory in this particular rustbelt shithole for no reason Sam can figure. Dean doesn't mind, of course, he just leans back on his elbows and hums some more fucking Blind Willie Johnson until it's all Sam can do not to smack his that contented smile with the butt of the damn gun.

"What," Sam says, jamming silver bullets into the chamber with audible clicks, "is the appeal, Dean? I mean, you've been on this blues kick for days. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the Metallica."

"Ha, can't fool me, Sam. I'm your brother. I know you like it."

Sam feels his pulse get curiously fast, like Dean's caught him watching Skinemax and he can't quite work out why he's so embarrassed. Though it isn't true. Definitely untrue. He hates the blues.

"I fucking hate the blues," he says.

Dean pulls another beer from the carton and peels back the top. "You fucking love the blues."

"I mean...what's so wrong with just being happy?"

"Who says the blues aren't happy?"

Sam clicks the sawed-off back into place and snags the last PBR. He needs a buzz right now, piss-warm beer or not. "That's why they call it the blues?"

Dean gives him a strange look and Sam's pulse skitters higher, beats quarter time. "And you don't know anything about that, huh, Sammy?"

Sam gives his best derisive laugh. He looks at the gun on his lap, his boots on the gleaming rear fender. His hands are shaking, and he stills them.

"Having the blues? Fuck, Dean. Of course I know."

They fall silent. There aren't any birds around here. The old car plant is too barren even for pigeons or rats. He just hears his breathing, careful and even, and Dean, flipping the bottle cap faster and faster until Sam wonders if he could get into the Guinness Book of World Records for beer tabs.

"Sam, if this is about Ruby--"

Laughter is almost as good as a sob, sometimes. "Not about Ruby."

"Or...you know, the Devil thing--"

And sometimes it's like pissing into a category five hurricane. "You mean that whole unleashing Armageddon thing?"

It's the first time he's said it aloud. For a moment, Dean looks like he's been slapped, but he pulls it together. Tries not to look horrified at the bald truth. "Yeah, well. I'd say we both had a hand in that."

Sam tries to quantify the difference between cracking after decades of unspeakable torture in hell and being so fucking pig-headed that leaving your brother on a pile of broken glass in a honeymoon suite seems preferable to doubting your demon girlfriend has something other than your best interests at heart.

Very carefully, he puts the sawed-off in their weapon bag, beyond temptation.

"Sam, you know it wasn't..."

"My fault?"

Dean swallows. Tries again. "I mean it's done. We both did it. Now all we can do is put it right."

"You can't put the fucking apocalypse right, Dean. It's pretty much the definition of FUBAR."

"It ain't over till the fat lady sings, Sammy."

"Did you really just say that?"

Dean grimaces and takes a long pull of beer. "Man. Think I'm a little rusty on my pep talk skills."

And Sam can't help but think it: how lucky he is to have his brother beside him, here at the end of the world. "Trouble soon be over, sorrow will have an end," he says.

"Funny how someone who hates the blues knows all the lyrics."

But then the angels show and it's too late for Sam to fumble for an answer. What's there to say, anyway? Just the usual-- you only hate what you love, you only deny what you understand all too damn well.



#



The first battle of the angelic civil war takes place at seven forty four pm, in a Soap'n'Suds just off the highway in Andalusia, Alabama. It's the only laundromat in town, and the owner has been wringing his hands and bleating, "We close at eight, you know," for the last goddamn half hour, until Dean turns around and grits a smile and says, very carefully, "My brother needs to finish his darks, okay?" The owner takes a careful half step back and raises his hands, like Dean's actually drawn the Beretta even now lying warm and familiar in the waistband of his jeans.

"Hey, Dean--" Sam says.

Dean keeps his smile in place. "I've got it, Sam."

"No, Dean--"

He takes a step closer to the owner. "That okay with you?"

And then Sam's hand is hard against his shoulder blades and they're falling to the ground just as window glass rains like hail around them. The owner curses, and scrambles back just as the washing machines start to gurgle and shake. Water gushes from their gaping mouths, then soap.

"What the fuck?" the owner says. He whirls around and slips on the mingled powdered glass and soap. It happens too fast for Dean to save him-- his fall is nearly balletic, so gracefully does he fall head-first into the Special Soap'n'Suds quadruple loader. Which, at that precise moment, starts its spin cycle. The poor guy doesn't have time to do more than grunt before Sam has brains in his hair and Dean has to wipe half of an eyeball from his jeans.

They exchange a glance. The man's legs are twitching, and Dean hopes it's just the jolts from the machine.

"Is this what I wish to non-existent god it isn't?" Dean says.

Sam looks like he wants to laugh, but neither of them would like what came out if he did. "Angels," he says. "Maybe we should shut our--"

And Dean is really fucking glad he does, because it isn't even a second later that another blast rocks the laundromat and he finds himself planted on the ground again. This time it feels like the sun is peeling back his tightly-closed lids and the glass grinds into his exposed skin in a way he fucking wishes were unfamiliar.

"Sammy!" he calls, panicked because he can hardly hear over the screeching, howling cacophony of pure angel voices and he can't see past the eyeball-burning light and none of that would really matter if he could feel that his little brother is okay, but he can't, because Sam vanished somewhere in that second between being splattered with human brains and an angel battle invading their fucking laundromat.

"Sammy!" he tries again, and then stops. His throat feels raw from the scream, but even he can't hear it. He gets his legs under him and gropes until he finds a washing machine to lean against. The angel winds are getting stronger. He thinks that if he and Sam don't get out of here quick, there won't be much more left of them than Mr. Soap'n'Suds after the spin cycle.

Something passes so close he can feel his skin burning. It smells like ice, like snow frozen and turned to powder in the deep of a North Dakota winter, like battery acid and bleach. Dean shivers with a terror purer than anything he ever felt in four decades of hell. He knows that if this creature so chooses, everything that he's ever loved or hated about himself or the world will killed with its purity.

"Sam," he says, but he whispers it. He can't move, now. He can hardly think. And then the angel passes and there's just burning light and broken glass and the comparatively reassuring scent of mountain fresh Tide.

He thinks, at least the devil can sing the blues. And he thinks, why the fuck not, and starts singing, "It must-a be that old evil spirit so deep down in the ground. You may bury my body down by the highway side."

He's crawling forward, and it's strange, but the song seems to diminish the force of the angel voices in his ears, makes it possible for him to hear the crack of something heavy being thrown across the room, the splintering of a table, a grunt.

He doesn't even know if Sam is conscious, but at least he's alive.

"You may bury my body down by the highway side!" It's more of a yell than a tune at this point, but it seems to work. The winds recede enough for him to follow that faint thread of Sam's labored breathing clear across the room. He falls three times before he reaches him, but Dean hardly notices.

And then he's made it. He grasps Sam's shoulder, and he swears he can feel the angels' sudden focus: it's like being fondled by an icicle.

"Dean?"

Oh, fuck. Sam's voice scares the hell out of him, it's so broken. What the hell just happened? "Sammy, you okay? You didn't open your eyes, did you?"

Sam laughs and it catches-- on a gasp or a sob, Dean can't tell. "Yeah. I'm fine. Fucking fine. Aren't I always?"

Keep Sam safe, then rip him a new one. "Where's the door, Sam?"

"Ten feet to our right," Sam says, without even hesitating.

That angel-smell is getting fiercer and the angel-light is getting brighter. He doesn't think they have more than a minute to save themselves, if that. He puts his shoulder under Sam's arm and hauls him up. They stumble out the door thirty agonizing seconds later, and get to open their eyes just in time to see the Andalusia Soap'n'Suds-along with all their clothes-burst into flames. Like an ant caught beneath a magnifying glass.

Sam's breathing is shallow, but not labored. Probably a cracked rib or two. His right arm is bloody and a bit twisted. Dean prays it isn't broken.

He looks back at the burning laundromat. "Think we can get a refund?"

Sam laughs. "I'll ask Zachariah."

"Maybe we'll finally catch a break and someone killed that bastard back there."

It's such a fantasy that Sam doesn't even bother to respond. They lean against the Impala for a minute longer, staring at the towering flames. Neither of them want to move. The fire department is damn slow in this town.

"Sam." Dean clears his throat. "What the hell was that, back in there? Where did you go?"

"You can bury my body down by the highway side," Sam says. He pushes himself off the driver's side door and winces. "I think I dislocated my shoulder."

Dean can't bear to speak. He can't bear to think.

He pushes past his brother and slams the door.



#



Sam smells the pot even before Dean opens the bag. It's got that aromatic, hydroponic, crystals-on-the-bud scent that Sam remembers from certain well-connected friends in his Stanford days. It's a memory so deeply removed from his current reality that for a moment he wonders if it's something the angels gave him, some twisted piece of might-have-been designed to prove how he could never have achieved any of his dreams or done anything but walk the this path foreordained by his parents and his grandparents and his very own goddamned prophet. Smith & Wesson, meet Stanford Sam, you'll find you share in common a deep-seated sense of wrongness and general fakery, since of course the all-American boy pretending to be Sam W. is, in fact, the Antichrist himself, for a limited time in our corporate pastel edition!

Dean looks at Sam, but doesn't ask if he's okay. He hasn't since the disaster at the laundromat, and Sam doesn't know if he should feel grateful or wonder if his own brother has stopped caring.

"So, this is weird," Dean says.

"I think they thought we were feds."

"Well," Dean shrugs. "We do look pretty snazzy."

"I miss my jeans, Dean."

"Blame Cas. I mean, they're angels. They can't fly by a cash register every once in a while?"

"Thou shalt not steal?"

Dean looks at him.

Sam starts to shrug, thinks better of it. "Okay, yeah. You got me."

They look down again at the quarter pound of grade-A bud that has landed, as it were, in their laps. The guys selling dope on the corner of the diner had taken one look at their suits and sunglasses and set off down the block like hellhounds were chasing them. Sam didn't envy the guy who had dropped this, though.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Dean said.

"We are not drug dealers, Dean."

"Do you want to spend the rest of the week looking Ackroyd and Belushi?"

"Who?"

Dean tosses one hand in the air and puts the bag in his suit pocket with his other. "How can you be my brother?"

Sam hardly notices it, but deep within that frozen space inside of him, something eases. He finds himself smiling. "Dude, you don't know who Mary Poppins is."

"The fucking blues brothers, Sam!"

"All right, fine, whatever. But if we're going to be Cheech and Chong, maybe we should get off the street, huh?"

"Man, I love Up in Smoke," Dean says as they slide into a booth in the diner.

Sam leans back on the seat and closes his eyes. His ribs hurt, his shoulder is still killing him, and he couldn't even induce an army of pissed-off angels to fucking end it, already. And yet, he doesn't feel completely terrible.

"I know," he says.

That evening, Dean swaggers into a roadside bar and Sam covers him, his eyes darting nervously over the crowd, looking for anyone with a whiff of cop. This is a terrible idea, but not significantly worse than credit card fraud, pool hustling or Texas hold 'em. And he is really, seriously, sick of this suit.

Dean makes it work. He offloads the bud on a gang of heavily tatted bikers whose hogs are sprawled across half the lot out back-- though how he convinced them that he wasn't a narc in that getup, Sam will never understand. But he walks out of the bar with two grand in his pocket and a grin on his face as he says, "I think this calls for a celebration!"

Sam is expecting an evening of Johnny Walker, Magic Fingers and Busty Asian Beauties, but he can't say he's exactly surprised when his brother takes out some rolling paper and a tiny sandwich bag with the last of the pot.

Sam laughs. "I should have known. Here, let me do that." It takes him a few tries, but eventually he gets the absurdly fat blunt to keep together. "Like riding a bicycle," he says.

Dean looks at him and he knows they're both remembering the last time one of them said that.

Sam lights it up, smokes and hands it to Dean. Sam coughs, because he always does, and Dean blows rings with his mouth, because that sort of thing helped him get laid when they were teenagers.

They settle back on the couch, content and buzzed, and pass the joint back and forth until Sam realizes that his hands feel like they are only tenuously connected to his body and maybe he should stop.

"It's been a while," he says. "Jess hated pot." It's strange how little it hurts to speak about her now. He wonders when that happened.

"Corrupter of youth?" Dean says.

"Nah, Jess wasn't that straight. It just made her paranoid." He starts to laugh, folds in on himself, the memory is so funny. "You should have seen her the first time! She took a bong hit and I swear she had hallucinations. I had to hold her hand all night." He pauses. "That's when I knew she liked me."

Suddenly, Sam can see it coming, rushing at him like a freight train. And he's not even tied to the tracks, he could get off and save himself. But what's the point? He takes another drag on the blunt; he stares into the light.

"You know sometimes I'm glad she's dead?"

"Sam--"

"I am. I think that makes me a horrible person, even without the whole Antichrist thing. But you know, if she'd lived...and I still had this...inside me. Fuck, Dean. I don't know what I would have done to her. And if she could see what I've become, what I've done..."

He's not crying. The train is running him over and he thinks he's doing remarkably well, given the circumstances, but Dean is still staring at him. Dean still looks like he's watching him die.

"Sam--"

And so Sam meets his eyes. He laughs and shrugs, and thinks, fine, you wanted to see what's inside of me? It's yours. I wish to god you would take it.

To his surprise, though, Dean doesn't look away. He sucks in his lips like he's about to fight a poltergeist, but he doesn't look away.

"Do you want to know how I want to die, Sammy?"

"What?"

"Okay, maybe you don't, but I'll tell you anyway. I'll be about, oh, fifty-five, sixty. There will be a beautiful woman in my bed, a fucking good movie on the television and you will be somewhere else and safe and that's it." He snaps his fingers. "Lights out. That's how I want to die."

Sam is so used to feeling numb that he can't quite work out the echoing hollow that seems to have replaced his chest. It hurts, and he doesn't understand that either. He starts to cry.

"You? Well, I don't want you to die, and that's the truth. But since I know I can't hold it off forever, sometimes I think about it. You should be eighty, maybe. Or, whatever, even ninety, cause you'll have good health insurance. You'll die in your bed, surrounded by the decent fucking family that you deserve, and you'll have forgotten all about me and Dad."

This isn't fair. Pot is supposed to make you happy. It's supposed to be relaxing. It shouldn't feel like this, like a hellhound has crawled down his throat and started playing cat's cradle with his intestines.

"But that's just a fantasy, and I know it, Sam. I know it. I'm not dumb. I can see you...and me. So do you want to know how I think we'll die?"

"In the apocalypse?"

They both smile-- faintly, grimly, but it's there.

Dean shrugs. "And if we make it out of that? I'll be thirty-five, forty, tops." He swallows. "You, Sammy. You won't make it to forty. Bloody and sad. That's how it ends for us."

They are brothers, and Sam understands what Dean is offering him even before he finishes. "But, together," Sam says.

"If you can stop begging angels to smite you, then yeah. Together."

Sorrow will have an end. "Why do you think angels hate the blues?"

"How the hell would I know? Man, this pot shit is overrated. You want some Jack?"

Sam smiles, and he knows what Dean will see: his little brother climbing back from whatever hell has gripped him, battered and sprawled on the couch in a cheap suit, desperate for some booze. Back to normal-- for a Winchester.

"Yeah," Sam says. "I could use some Jack."



END