Devil Music
A/N: This is sort of composed of a few butchered things I wrote awhile ago. Hopefully answering a few questions, or maybe asking a few more. Contains one super stereotype with a bad dialect. Hope you don't mind. It's the song fic that isn't. A songs fic, I guess. All used are listed at the end and I have most of them, so if you're desperate to hear, let me know.
The first cassette Dean ever has is an old one from the Allman Brothers, an album called Brothers and Sisters. John gives it to him when he's eleven years old as a sort of birthday present. That is, if you count scratched up, hand me down, worn out cassette tapes as gifts, anyway.
The music is good, nothing he's too aware of or concerned with just yet, but it's always there. When they're out driving, in between towns where every radio station comes in with static, he shoves the tape in the deck and hits play.
They listen to Pony Boy, and Southbound, and Ramblin' Man, which is something like the story of their lives.
At seven, Jessica is Sam's favorite. Whenever it plays, which is often, he bounces around in the backseat like it's the soundtrack to his own little movie.
"You dork," Dean tells him. "There aren't even any words."
"So?" Sam retorts and sticks out his tongue. "I think it's pretty."
Sam learns how to handle a gun when he's eight years old. Dean was nine.
They're in a motel room, somewhere, and Sam is supposed to be cleaning the .45, showing John that he can do it without blowing half his face off. But the kid seems to be paying more attention to the cartoons on the television, the Roadrunner, and Wile E. Coyote than the gun in his little hands.
Dean sits on one of the beds, one eye on the TV, one on Sammy, and a hand on the clock radio, scanning through the dial until he finds a station worth listening to. The combination of the TV noise and the radio create confusing voices and he leans his head closer to the radio to listen.
Always on the run. Destiny is the rising sun.
I was born a six-gun in my hand.
Behind the gun, I'll make my final stand.
John looks over Sam's work with a critical eye, eventually nodding and climbing to his feet.
"Fine," he says. "Okay. Clean up here." And then he shuffles over into the bathroom and closes the door.
His Dad's only gone a minute when Dean hears a quiet sort of snuffle over everything else. Laughter, so soft, it takes him a moment to realize it's coming from Sam. He turns to see Sammy perched on the edge of the chair, gun held loosely in his lap, watching the cartoon intently and laughing under his breath.
And this doesn't disturb him at all. The thing isn't loaded. In fact, Dean only says something because he knows John will be back out in a few minutes. He's trying to help Sam out.
"Sam," he says sternly. "Pay attention. Clean up." The smile drops from Sam's face and the glare Dean receives makes it feel like his last ally has just turn coated.
Rebel souls. Deserters we are called.
Chose a gun and threw away the sun.
He willingly protects Sam, takes care of him, but it's not really his fight to get Sam to follow orders. It's never really been his fight. Not any of it really. It's John's and then it's Sam's and he was, and will always just be, the guy on the outside, listening to the music and cracking bad jokes.
Sam takes a greyhound bus to Stanford. They're staying in a tiny town in upstate New York at the time and the nearest bus station is in Ithaca, so Dean drives him down. The car ride is short and silent and the goodbye is the same. Too many angry echoes of their father's fight, too many things Dean should have said, too many things they shouldn't have done.
Go now go. Walk out the door.
Just turn around now. You're not welcome anymore.
Dean carries one of Sam's bags into the station and waits in line with him. He taps his fingers on his thigh along with the oldies that play through the station's intercoms, randomly interrupted by crackling boarding announcements. He pays for the ticket with some of John's poker won dollars. In the middle of the crowd, there's a firm handshake, held between their chests, and the standard, manly, half hug.
"Do good," Dean says. Sam nods stiffly and shoulders his bags, turns, and walks away.
Dean sits on one of the benches and watches through the window as his brother climbs onto the bus bound for California. Stopovers in Cleveland, Kansas City, and Salt Lake. He wonders if he'll call. Probably won't.
At first I was afraid. I was petrified.
I kept thinking I could never live without you by my side.
The crappy retro disco music filters into his brain again from the intercom speakers as the bus pulls away. Aretha Franklin, Dean thinks. This thing, fate, life, whatever, has one twisted sense of humor.
I will survive.
The last job John sends Dean on is that gig in the boot of Louisiana. He hurries, but it's an easy job anyway. Nothing he can't do alone and done in less than a week.
On the way back east, he stops for gas right on the state line, swampland. Bubba country, John used to call it.
Dean pulls up to one of the two pumps at the station, blaring some AC/DC and not bothering to turn it down. When he cuts the engine, the silence is startling. The place is nearly dead, a run down little rat's nest of a mini mart, inside which the attendant sits. Outside the door, an old man sits in a lawn chair next to the soda and newspaper machines, wearing overalls and Ray Charles sunglasses.
Dean taps his fingers anxiously on the trunk as he waits for the tank to fill. It's sweltering down here this time of year and he quickly opts to lose the jacket, shrugging it off and tossing it through the window onto the backseat before going inside. He nods briskly toward the man outside the door before ducking in and handing the snoozing attendant a scratched piece of plastic with a name on it that is not his own.
On the way back out, he pauses for a moment on the stoop as the heat hits him again, like a too heavy blanket. It's a mistake though, as the man in the lawn chair twists his neck up to speak at him.
"Hey," the man says, somehow making the word into two syllables. He gestures out toward the car. "Tha's the devil's music yo listenin' to out they-uh."
"Yea," Dean nods, whatever, and moves away from him, toward the car. He's only taken one step though when a hand falls on his shoulder, heavy through the thin cotton t-shirt. He knows it's the stupid old man, knows he isn't a threat, just a stupid old man, but he tenses up anyway, shifts his weight and turns slowly to face him.
"Boy," the old man cocks his head at Dean, doesn't let go of his shoulder. "You listenin' to me? That is the devil's music. You gonna lead him right to you listenin' to that. Yuh unduhstand?"
Dean swallows and nods, sweat thick on his forehead. The man finally releases him, though he was never really held in place, and nods in dismissal before settling back into his chair. Dean turns and takes long strides toward the car, but the man's voice calls after him.
"Ain't no good come of that. The devil's music," the man laughs, high and creeping. "Uh-uh. It'd lead him right to yuh."
Dean pulls out slowly onto the road, not daring to touch the radio until he's a few miles down gone.
But when he turns the knob, it plays only static.
The next day, John is gone.
He leaves Sam at Stanford, again. It's probably one of the hardest things he's done, driving away entirely alone for the first time ever, nowhere to go, only people to find.
He comes up to the corner and stops at a red light, reaches over to punch at the radio knob. They've been down to Jericho and back and it was just Sam messing with the dial all the way north. He'd tuned in some crap top forty station and Dean had let him.
He hadn't touched the radio after that, maybe wanting to leave that evidence of Sam's presence, but now as he turns up the volume, he recognizes the song instantly and it isn't any kind of top forty. It's from the early seventies. High guitar solos and rambling rhythms.
No words.
"So?" Sammy says in his head. "I think it's pretty."
Jessica.
A glance at his watch. It's November 2nd, of course it is, and the second hand isn't moving.
The stab in his gut is like loss all over again. He hangs a u-turn under the red light and stomps on the gas.
Stanford is three months and two thousand miles behind them. They're cruising down route six, the radio drowning out the sound of rubber tire on road. Dean's driving and Sam's sleeping, and then he's awake, drifting back and forth, in and out, until he forces himself to sit up and swallows half a bottle of water.
Home in the darkness; Home on the highway
Home isn't my way; Home I'll never be
Sam tilts his head toward the speaker.
"What is this?" he asks. Dean glances at him, startled by the voice cutting into his foggy ears.
"What's what?"
"This song. Who is this?"
"Oh," Dean nods. "It's BOC."
I can't see no reason to put up a fight
I'm living for giving the devil his due
And I'm burning, I'm burning, I'm burning for you
"Huh," Sam shakes his head. "I never heard it before." Dean nods again, but doesn't say anything. It's kind of odd, he thinks, kind of funny, because he's heard this one a million times.
In the car again, the back seat, after the demon is gone. For now, anyway. They're flying down the road toward the hospital and the radio is on. They're all at least half way dead, bleeding all over and it should mean something, Dean thinks, that the radio is on now, especially with Dad here. Just a chipper little tune to accompany them on an emergency drive to the hospital.
I hear hurricanes a blowing. I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers overflowing. I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
He should know this one, but his brain is fogged past thought. It's a warning, like all the others, that devil music. Sam and his father are talking in front, but he can't quite hear them, like they're a million miles away and his head is underwater. The song is fading too, but he tries desperately to hold onto it. He can figure this one out. He has to.
Hope you got your things together. Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we're in for nasty weather. One eye is taken for an eye.
Every heartbeat begins to feel like the churning of water down the drain and he struggles to hold his head up, because this isn't how it's supposed to end. Bleeding slowly in the backseat, Sam and Dad arguing in front, but not even looking at him now, no one looking at him now. He can't warn them, can't understand it himself.
Don't go around tonight.
Well, it's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise.
They don't turn back.
Dean's earliest clear memory is this.
He's wandering through the upstairs hall in the middle of the night; hardwood floors warm under bare feet. Sammy is two months old and every window in the house is wide open in an attempt to release the summer heat, heavy in the night. That's why he's awake. Can't sleep. Too hot.
And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."
There's low music coming from the nursery, a rusted radio sitting on the dresser. It's an old melody, soft and strumming. Later, he'll know it's Bob Dylan, but for now, he's drawn only by the rough, unknown voice. He comes around the corner to see Mama in the rocking chair, holding baby Sammy and humming softly.
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn.
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."
She doesn't notice he's there right away, but he doesn't call out. Gripping the doorframe with one, too small hand, he watches as she smoothes Sammy's blanket around him and talks soft words Dean can't hear or remember.
Then, she looks up, pale skin and glowing blue eyes in the dark.
"Dean," she smiles. "Come in here."
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."
He doesn't think too much on this one.
Songs:
The Allman Brothers Band-Pony Boy, Southbound, Ramblin' Man, Jessica
Bad Company- Bad Company
Aretha Franklin- I Will Survive
Blue Oyster Cult-I'm Burnin' for You
Creedence Clearwater Revival-Bad Moon Rising
Bob Dylan- Shelter From the Storm
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