Me and the Devil Blues
May. 30th, 2013 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_lioraTitle: Me and the Devil Blues
Characters: Dean & Crowley
Type: Friendship
Rating: R
Medium: Fic
Word Count: 1,854
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any related character. I do own a fedora. It is quite snazzy.
Summary: Post 8x23 Dean get Crowley drunk and talk about music. Fill for a square on the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spnpairingbingo.
Warnings: Expletives, Slight bashing of famous singers.
Link: Me and the Devil Blues
Dean stares at him blankly before pouring another glass of the clear liquid. For a moment Crowley considers refusing it. After all there was a principle to this, and he had been drinking fine Brandy for hundreds of years. That being said, they were long past the point where the taste of the liquor mattered. All that was left was a slight memory of the burn.
Where Dean had gotten it was also a long forgotten question. The man was anything but forthcoming, and Crowley didn’t feel like arguing. He was tender, confused, and in some weird in between place where he wasn’t quite human, but he wasn’t a demon either. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like the weight of the conscience he had forgotten so long ago nudging its way back into the foreground of his mind.
And that’s where the moonshine came in.
In a way Crowley had always admired Dean a little. The man reminded Crowley a bit of himself. Rough around the edges, not fitting in with the society he found himself in, and willing to go to any lengths to get what he wanted. Once upon a time Crowley had even been like Dean in the sense of having something he would die to protect. A love that seemed controllable and distant on the outside, but clawed its way through your chest until you had no breath and no joy left. A love that wouldn’t happen, couldn’t happen, but that you’d sell your soul for even the vaguest chance at.
Crowley had all those things, and all he’d wanted was to achieve that love. It was the ultimate difference between them; Dean could live with just the promise of that love. Crowley had doomed himself to an eternity of Hellfire in the interest of making that love happen. It hadn’t worked out.
So yes, Dean reminded Crowley of himself in a lot of ways, and that was why Crowley had never trusted Dean. It had nothing to do with him being a Winchester, although that was a convenient excuse, and everything to do with Crowley knowing that if anyone was ever going to take him down it would be Dean Winchester. He had turned out to be right about that, and wrong about being able to stop it.
Now he had all those tortures and deals weighing heavily on him, and the moonshine only made it distant enough that Crowley wasn’t actively considering slitting his wrists and hoping that would kill him. Was he mortal now? Was he capable of dying? There was no one to answer those questions, because as always Dean had made this decision without looking at the long-term consequences.
“So Johnson right?” Dean’s eyes glittered suspiciously and Crowley didn’t miss how they traveled over the door his brother was behind. The one Sam Winchester had collapsed into not so long ago. Before the moonshine came out. Before the newly human Castiel had started drinking and passed out almost immediately.
“Johnson what?” Crowley took another gulp of the liquor and pretended that he couldn’t see a long line of humans that had bled and screamed and cried under his hands in the lines of Dean’s face.
“Sold his soul? For fame?” The older Winchester, oldest for the last few years, licked his lips and slouched back in his seat. Apparently they weren’t going to discuss any of the incredibly serious things weighing on them. Waiting for them to handle them.
“Yes. But that is off the record. Crossroads confidentiality you understand.” Crowley topped his glass off again, and in the process dribbled onto the table. He was drunk, very drunk, and what counted as alcohol poisoning? Could he die from alcohol poisoning? He hadn’t drank as a mortal since electricity was only wielded by witches.
“What about Britney Spears? Or that other skanky Disney chick?” Dean wiped ineffectually at the spill on the table before loosely grabbing up his cup.
“That’s not very specific Winchester. There’s a lot of those.” What should he do now? He remembered what Sam had said to Dean as his brother tried to talk him down. Sam’s confession. Who had Crowley let down? There was no one left to apologize to. No one to play up to. Crowley knew all too well that God wasn’t around to hear what he had to say, and the woman whose love had mattered so much was firmly planted in Heaven spending her eternity no doubt with some facsimile of his brother if not the actual soul.
Crowley had been very disappointed when he learned his war-mongering brother hadn’t ended up downstairs.
“Just give me something here Crowley. You gotta know. Explain to me how music got this way.” Dean’s eyes slit in the lamp light as he considers his glass. “Whatever happened to the good old days when lyrics meant something? You know skill and shit.”
Something occurs to Crowley, and for a moment he’s speechless. Another new occurrence. Dean Winchester is trying to distract him from his troubles.
“Short-sighted.”
Dean raises an eyebrow and gestures expansively with his sloshing glass. “Explain.”
“There are no good old days. Not in music and not in life. That’s an illusion your kind create to make the hard times seem easier. It used to be good, and maybe it can be good again. You ever heard of ‘Sweet Pea’ or ‘Cherish’? Old songs, and positively dreadful. For every Rolling Stones you had The Archies or Ohio Express. Then again there’s modern music that’s very good if you look for it. So you’ve built up this time as something that was special and skilled, as if that was a magical time for music, and you assume that this bad music is our fault. Well I’ll tell you Winchester I got more souls in the Seventies than I’ve gotten in the last fifteen years off the music industry. Auto-tuning ruined my business.” It’s more than he meant to say, but Dean’s leaning in with those glistening eyes again.
“Who? Who’d you make famous in the Seventies?” He licks his lips again before draining his glass and making a pleased sound. Crowley copies his motions.
“Black Sabbath, The Charlie Daniels Band, and Jim Croce to name a few.” He burps loudly and Dean laughs which makes him laugh. Then he puts his glass down. “Although I think Sabbath could have made it on their own.”
“Croce? You made Croce?” Dean leans in again eyes wide and practically glowing. “Croce? Guy was soft as marshmallows.”
“What you have to be hard to sell your soul? Write a song about the devil? All you need is a little know-how and a wish Winchester. You should know that.” A death wish. Plus a demon that won’t care what your sob story is as long as your soul gets collected when the time is up. That’s what Crowley’s done, what he’s been, and suddenly the melancholy and ache is back. He misses being untouchable.
“Well I mean it can’t hurt. What about Spears though? Tell me she did.” Dean refills their glasses and practically tilts Crowley’s to his lips. He wasn’t mistaken about earlier. The man is honestly trying to keep him from falling into self-pity.
“Nope. The Cyrus girl, and two of the Backstreet Boys. That little Bieber girl and Bono. Oh, and Chumbawumba but they got out of it. Slippery British bastards.”
“Bieber is a boy.” Dean sips his moonshine and then slides a little down in his chair. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Well he is now.” Crowley doesn’t feel pride talking about it, doesn’t swell the way he used to, and is instead left with a pervasive hollowness. The kid hadn’t been so bad before she decided to lose herself. Dean’s right that in older times the targets of his deals usually talked about him, but these days the future damned often find the subject matter too heavy. They throw themselves into causes and drugs as if those earthly things could anchor them. Could keep the hounds at bay.
If Crowley can die will his own hounds come for him?
“Why Winchester?” His voice sounds odd to him, slurry and off in a way he was unprepared for, but Dean gets it. Gets it instantly because like Crowley suspected the man is not as drunk as he pretends and he’s too much like Crowley for his own good.
“’Cause you ain’t that anymore. We changed you into one of us, and that makes you sorta our responsibility.” Dean finishes his glass and then lowers it gently to the table. His eyes roam over Castiel for a second and then back to the door. “I don’t take responsibility lightly.”
“Stop taking the piss out of me. I killed the people you saved. I tried to kill you. Hell I tried that a lot. I’ve seen you walk away for less.” Crowley wants to shove, to push, because it’s been years since that was his only resort for this sort of anger. Dean seems to know that. To understand that. His eyes go soft again and then he makes another one of those wide hand gestures.
“You know what I see when I look at you Crowley?”
For a moment he just wants to be himself again. To give Dean the disbelieving smirk he would have a few days ago or a snarky verbal barb to reassert his position and strength. Instead his mouth moves drunkenly without him. “What?” He sounds eager, needy, and he hates himself. That was the man that sold his soul for a few inches below the belt because he honestly believed that was what he was lacking to woo Rosalyn.
“A man that doesn’t know what to do with himself. A man that doesn’t have a clue how to survive, because he doesn’t have a North to point to. You gotta find a North now Crowley. You get that?”
And he does. He really does. “Winchest-Dean. When you got back from Hell how did you re-acclimate? How did you make it so you didn’t feel so dirty all the time?” Sam may understand the need to atone, may get confession, but he was in the Cage for his stay downstairs. He never stood by the racks, never hurt souls, and that means he can’t get this aspect of Crowley’s guilt.
But Dean can.
Green eyes narrow and then glance back to the door. “I didn’t. You never do. You just keep trying to do good things and hope it works on balance. That eventually there’s enough good that bad is just gone. Otherwise what’s the point?”
Crowley could add that for Dean it’s important to be clean because he has a higher power, a faith system that is uniquely his and works for him. Except he knows better, because Dean isn’t that self-aware. Crowley casts his eyes around the room and wonders if there’s something more for him here than a potential suicide.
“You think you could teach me that? How to find North?”
Dean nods, and then refills their glasses and taps them together. “Yeah. I can try.”
Characters: Dean & Crowley
Type: Friendship
Rating: R
Medium: Fic
Word Count: 1,854
Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any related character. I do own a fedora. It is quite snazzy.
Summary: Post 8x23 Dean get Crowley drunk and talk about music. Fill for a square on the
spnpairingbingo.Warnings: Expletives, Slight bashing of famous singers.
Link: Me and the Devil Blues
Dean stares at him blankly before pouring another glass of the clear liquid. For a moment Crowley considers refusing it. After all there was a principle to this, and he had been drinking fine Brandy for hundreds of years. That being said, they were long past the point where the taste of the liquor mattered. All that was left was a slight memory of the burn.
Where Dean had gotten it was also a long forgotten question. The man was anything but forthcoming, and Crowley didn’t feel like arguing. He was tender, confused, and in some weird in between place where he wasn’t quite human, but he wasn’t a demon either. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like the weight of the conscience he had forgotten so long ago nudging its way back into the foreground of his mind.
And that’s where the moonshine came in.
In a way Crowley had always admired Dean a little. The man reminded Crowley a bit of himself. Rough around the edges, not fitting in with the society he found himself in, and willing to go to any lengths to get what he wanted. Once upon a time Crowley had even been like Dean in the sense of having something he would die to protect. A love that seemed controllable and distant on the outside, but clawed its way through your chest until you had no breath and no joy left. A love that wouldn’t happen, couldn’t happen, but that you’d sell your soul for even the vaguest chance at.
Crowley had all those things, and all he’d wanted was to achieve that love. It was the ultimate difference between them; Dean could live with just the promise of that love. Crowley had doomed himself to an eternity of Hellfire in the interest of making that love happen. It hadn’t worked out.
So yes, Dean reminded Crowley of himself in a lot of ways, and that was why Crowley had never trusted Dean. It had nothing to do with him being a Winchester, although that was a convenient excuse, and everything to do with Crowley knowing that if anyone was ever going to take him down it would be Dean Winchester. He had turned out to be right about that, and wrong about being able to stop it.
Now he had all those tortures and deals weighing heavily on him, and the moonshine only made it distant enough that Crowley wasn’t actively considering slitting his wrists and hoping that would kill him. Was he mortal now? Was he capable of dying? There was no one to answer those questions, because as always Dean had made this decision without looking at the long-term consequences.
“So Johnson right?” Dean’s eyes glittered suspiciously and Crowley didn’t miss how they traveled over the door his brother was behind. The one Sam Winchester had collapsed into not so long ago. Before the moonshine came out. Before the newly human Castiel had started drinking and passed out almost immediately.
“Johnson what?” Crowley took another gulp of the liquor and pretended that he couldn’t see a long line of humans that had bled and screamed and cried under his hands in the lines of Dean’s face.
“Sold his soul? For fame?” The older Winchester, oldest for the last few years, licked his lips and slouched back in his seat. Apparently they weren’t going to discuss any of the incredibly serious things weighing on them. Waiting for them to handle them.
“Yes. But that is off the record. Crossroads confidentiality you understand.” Crowley topped his glass off again, and in the process dribbled onto the table. He was drunk, very drunk, and what counted as alcohol poisoning? Could he die from alcohol poisoning? He hadn’t drank as a mortal since electricity was only wielded by witches.
“What about Britney Spears? Or that other skanky Disney chick?” Dean wiped ineffectually at the spill on the table before loosely grabbing up his cup.
“That’s not very specific Winchester. There’s a lot of those.” What should he do now? He remembered what Sam had said to Dean as his brother tried to talk him down. Sam’s confession. Who had Crowley let down? There was no one left to apologize to. No one to play up to. Crowley knew all too well that God wasn’t around to hear what he had to say, and the woman whose love had mattered so much was firmly planted in Heaven spending her eternity no doubt with some facsimile of his brother if not the actual soul.
Crowley had been very disappointed when he learned his war-mongering brother hadn’t ended up downstairs.
“Just give me something here Crowley. You gotta know. Explain to me how music got this way.” Dean’s eyes slit in the lamp light as he considers his glass. “Whatever happened to the good old days when lyrics meant something? You know skill and shit.”
Something occurs to Crowley, and for a moment he’s speechless. Another new occurrence. Dean Winchester is trying to distract him from his troubles.
“Short-sighted.”
Dean raises an eyebrow and gestures expansively with his sloshing glass. “Explain.”
“There are no good old days. Not in music and not in life. That’s an illusion your kind create to make the hard times seem easier. It used to be good, and maybe it can be good again. You ever heard of ‘Sweet Pea’ or ‘Cherish’? Old songs, and positively dreadful. For every Rolling Stones you had The Archies or Ohio Express. Then again there’s modern music that’s very good if you look for it. So you’ve built up this time as something that was special and skilled, as if that was a magical time for music, and you assume that this bad music is our fault. Well I’ll tell you Winchester I got more souls in the Seventies than I’ve gotten in the last fifteen years off the music industry. Auto-tuning ruined my business.” It’s more than he meant to say, but Dean’s leaning in with those glistening eyes again.
“Who? Who’d you make famous in the Seventies?” He licks his lips again before draining his glass and making a pleased sound. Crowley copies his motions.
“Black Sabbath, The Charlie Daniels Band, and Jim Croce to name a few.” He burps loudly and Dean laughs which makes him laugh. Then he puts his glass down. “Although I think Sabbath could have made it on their own.”
“Croce? You made Croce?” Dean leans in again eyes wide and practically glowing. “Croce? Guy was soft as marshmallows.”
“What you have to be hard to sell your soul? Write a song about the devil? All you need is a little know-how and a wish Winchester. You should know that.” A death wish. Plus a demon that won’t care what your sob story is as long as your soul gets collected when the time is up. That’s what Crowley’s done, what he’s been, and suddenly the melancholy and ache is back. He misses being untouchable.
“Well I mean it can’t hurt. What about Spears though? Tell me she did.” Dean refills their glasses and practically tilts Crowley’s to his lips. He wasn’t mistaken about earlier. The man is honestly trying to keep him from falling into self-pity.
“Nope. The Cyrus girl, and two of the Backstreet Boys. That little Bieber girl and Bono. Oh, and Chumbawumba but they got out of it. Slippery British bastards.”
“Bieber is a boy.” Dean sips his moonshine and then slides a little down in his chair. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Well he is now.” Crowley doesn’t feel pride talking about it, doesn’t swell the way he used to, and is instead left with a pervasive hollowness. The kid hadn’t been so bad before she decided to lose herself. Dean’s right that in older times the targets of his deals usually talked about him, but these days the future damned often find the subject matter too heavy. They throw themselves into causes and drugs as if those earthly things could anchor them. Could keep the hounds at bay.
If Crowley can die will his own hounds come for him?
“Why Winchester?” His voice sounds odd to him, slurry and off in a way he was unprepared for, but Dean gets it. Gets it instantly because like Crowley suspected the man is not as drunk as he pretends and he’s too much like Crowley for his own good.
“’Cause you ain’t that anymore. We changed you into one of us, and that makes you sorta our responsibility.” Dean finishes his glass and then lowers it gently to the table. His eyes roam over Castiel for a second and then back to the door. “I don’t take responsibility lightly.”
“Stop taking the piss out of me. I killed the people you saved. I tried to kill you. Hell I tried that a lot. I’ve seen you walk away for less.” Crowley wants to shove, to push, because it’s been years since that was his only resort for this sort of anger. Dean seems to know that. To understand that. His eyes go soft again and then he makes another one of those wide hand gestures.
“You know what I see when I look at you Crowley?”
For a moment he just wants to be himself again. To give Dean the disbelieving smirk he would have a few days ago or a snarky verbal barb to reassert his position and strength. Instead his mouth moves drunkenly without him. “What?” He sounds eager, needy, and he hates himself. That was the man that sold his soul for a few inches below the belt because he honestly believed that was what he was lacking to woo Rosalyn.
“A man that doesn’t know what to do with himself. A man that doesn’t have a clue how to survive, because he doesn’t have a North to point to. You gotta find a North now Crowley. You get that?”
And he does. He really does. “Winchest-Dean. When you got back from Hell how did you re-acclimate? How did you make it so you didn’t feel so dirty all the time?” Sam may understand the need to atone, may get confession, but he was in the Cage for his stay downstairs. He never stood by the racks, never hurt souls, and that means he can’t get this aspect of Crowley’s guilt.
But Dean can.
Green eyes narrow and then glance back to the door. “I didn’t. You never do. You just keep trying to do good things and hope it works on balance. That eventually there’s enough good that bad is just gone. Otherwise what’s the point?”
Crowley could add that for Dean it’s important to be clean because he has a higher power, a faith system that is uniquely his and works for him. Except he knows better, because Dean isn’t that self-aware. Crowley casts his eyes around the room and wonders if there’s something more for him here than a potential suicide.
“You think you could teach me that? How to find North?”
Dean nods, and then refills their glasses and taps them together. “Yeah. I can try.”
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no subject
Date: 2013-06-02 07:31 pm (UTC)This was amazing on so many different levels. I haven't seen all of this season because, you know the UK sucks and my computer whimpers in fear when I try to stream or download episodes on line, but I have spoilered myself rotten so I did thankfully know what was going on with Crowley. The dialogue you write between him and Dean is amazing, so in character, snarky, clever and just real. I love how quietly intelligent Dean is, not something that's always portrayed.
I could quote bits of this all day because it's so brilliant and as usual I am in awe of your writing :)
xx
no subject
Date: 2013-06-04 04:31 am (UTC)I had to download this season because Sammich was insistent that I could not wait any longer (I usually just see them when they get put up on Netflix), and I agreed with her. It was worth it. As soon as you do get it trust me that finale is gonna blow you away.
I'm so glad you liked and it and the dialogue! Yeah Dean never gets his due on that one enough I think. :)
Thanks so much for the wonderful comment and the ego boosting!