Chapter Sixteen
"I'm just a lonesome cowboy, I ride an endless road…"
Sam turned a page of the yellowed manuscript he was studying.
"I bear a heavy burden, I haul a heavy load…"
The carefully inked diagram looked like the one in the other book; he cross-checked.
"I'm just a lonesome Hunter, my soul is bruised and old…"
"This looks like something similar," he said calmly, pointing out the resemblance to Bobby.
"My heart is tired and heavy, my feet are fucking cold…"
Bobby peered at both pages. "The rationale is pretty much the same," he agreed.
"I chose to walk this path, and I chose to walk alone…"
"Do you really think it might work?" queried Sam.
"Though it hurts my little tootsies to walk upon the stone…"
"The strategy is basically the same," shrugged Bobby, "Even if the starting point is different."
"For that bitch my little brother is completely in cahoots…"
"You think Crowley will agree to this?" asked Sam
"With the evil bearded bastard who stole my cowboy boots…"
"He will if the other option is to listen to Mr Dolly Parton in there," grumbled Bobby.
There was a flurry of guitar picking, and a change in tempo suggesting that somebody was about to commit Country and Western with extreme prejudice.
"Ohhhhhhhh I am a barefoot cowboy, I am a barefoot cowboy,
You took away my boots, you asshole, give 'em back right now, boy…"
"Dean!" Sam slammed down his pen, and stomped into the living room. Dean was wearing a mournful expression as he picked at one of his purloined guitars and sang sadly about his felonious footwear.
"My little toes are turning blue, I really don't care how, boy…"
"DEAN! SHUT! UP!" yelled Sam. "You are not getting back a pair of stolen boots!"
"But frozen toes is how it goes if you're a barefoot cowboy… hey, Sam!" Dean grinned up at his brother. "Do you like my song?"
"No," snapped Sam, "I don't like your song, I don't like your singing, and I don't care if your feet are cold – you are NOT getting those boots back!"
"After all the stuff I stole for you when we were kids," mumbled Dean resentfully.
"That was different," Sam insisted. "That was a kid takin' care of a kid, stealing the basic necessities of life."
"Boots is necessary!" Dean stated firmly.
"Footwear is necessary," agreed Sam. "Croc skin cowboy boots are not."
"Dr Sexy wears cowboy boots," said Dean.
"Dr Sexy is not real," Sam said through clenched teeth. "Dr Sexy is a fictitious character in a badly written, badly acted soap opera. Dr Sexy is in the same category as porn, fatal abstinence from sex and broccoli poisoning: completely separate from reality."
Dean began to strum his guitar furiously. "Lalalalalalalalalalaaaaa," he warbled, "Not listening, not listening, notlisteningnotlistening lalalalalalalalalalalaaaaaaa…"
"Oh, for fuck's sake," humphed Sam, raising his voice. "Bobby! Bobby! Can we put him in the panic room?"
"You don't stop bellowin' like a cow in heat, I'll put you in there with him," threatened Bobby, coming into the living room and glowering at both Winchesters. "Now, if you will stop singin', and you will stop yellin', I think we might have a way to undo this."
"Can I still keep the guitars?" asked Dean pleadingly.
"Son, if this works, you can serenade me in 3/4 time as I recline on a balcony, for all I care," sighed Bobby. "We're gonna need His Hellish Majesty for this one – gimme a hand with the summoning, Sam."
"Hey, tell him to go via Gillette and pick up my boots!" chirped Dean brightly as Sam rolled back the rug. "Tell him the store's on the main street, just opposite the ga-"
squirt squirt squirt squirt
As Dean yowled in discomfort, Bobby put down his holy water spray bottle, picked up the chalk, and began to draw on the floor.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
"Bobby!" Crowley beamed hugely, and proffered a box, "So good to hear from you again! I take it the problem child got home safely?"
"Hey, are those my boots?" asked Dean hopefully.
Crowley gave him a peculiar look. "These are éclairs, pain au chocolat, and one of my personal favourites, canelés, from Bordeaux. There's a particularly good patisserie there, does marvellous coffee, too, if you'd ever like to pop over for afternoon tea sometime I'd be only too happy to…"
"I didn't summon you here for elevenses, asshat," griped Bobby, putting the box aside on the table. Dean carefully lifted the lid, and peeked into it. "You are here to help unproblemify the problem child, seein' as it's your doin'."
Crowley gave Bobby his most winning smile. "Bobby, mate," he began in a reasonable voice, "I'll be the first to admit I'm not Mr Squeaky Clean, in fact I'm a lot closer to Mr Silently Filthy, so to speak, but this is all Dean. He's the one who chose to take the Mark, and he's the one who chose to pick up the First Blade, and he's the one who chose to go up against a rather irritable angel. He's technically dead, darling. If you want to get nature back on track to take its course, you have knives in this household that will do the job, and I'm sur-"
He finished on a wordless squeak as Bobby moved like a snake to put one of those blades against his throat.
"Now you listen to me, you schemin' slimy sumbitch," the old Hunter growled, "Your fingerprints are all over this. If you didn't know all the details, you suspected, then you aided, abetted, enabled and facilitated to turn my boy, my boy, into one of you pieces of black-eyed scum, so if you dare try to tell me that it's not your doin', I swear to you, Crowley, I will turn him loose with the Blade on your sorry worthless ass, and you will be grateful for the mercy he will offer after I have finished with you, because I promise you, I will tear you apart in ways that would make Alistair puke, and while you are beggin' for death I will laugh in your face and feed you piece by piece to my dog over what will seem to you like eternity and if you don't do this I will see you NAILED you piece of shit!"
"Meeep!" went Crowley.
Dean smiled brightly as he investigated the contents of the box. "Makes you go all tingly when he gets assertive like that, don't it?"
"So, now we've got that little misunderstandin' cleared up," Bobby beamed serenely at the King of Hell, "We can discuss how we're gonna tackle this."
"Er, yes, yes, quite," stuttered Crowley as Bobby let go of his shirt front. "Always happy to help a Man of Knowledge, ha ha ha, just call me Mr Helpful."
"The stuff we've been lookin' at has all related to the Trials of God," noted Sam. "Sealing the gates of Heaven, or Hell. And look how well that turned out last time," he added gloomily.
"You're thinkin' too literally, here," Bobby chided him, "That aint how spells work. They're as much about context as they are about actual content. We don't wanna seal any gates – although I gotta admit, lockin' the panic room door with somebody on the other side does sound pretty attractive – we're interested in the bit that's the means, not the end."
"You mean, cure a demon?" asked Sam.
"Almost," Bobby went on, "The thing is, Dean's not exactly your run-of-the-mill demon. He's been demonified, yeah, but not the usual way, and not completely."
"His singing is pretty diabolical," observed Sam tartly.
"No more so than usual," Bobby pointed out, "Stolen guitars notwithstandin'. He worries about you, he shows a distinct lack of desire to kill anybody except other demons, and he thinks of himself as a Hunter; on the inside, he's still essentially… Dean."
Dean looked up, face smeared with chocolate from the French pastries, and smiled.
"And he's still very Dean on the outside," muttered Bobby. "Anyway, the point is, he aint a demon. But he's demon-like. So, we gotta come up with a way to do that. And that is where you come in, Your Majesty," he turned to Crowley.
Crowley looked nonplussed. "Well, I'm surprised at you, Bobby," he said, "Given what it did to Moose last time. I mean, having to become an angel's onesie, talk about the cure being almost worse than the disease. I suppose you could ask your little friend Clarence to help out this time – the added bonus is that, as I understand it, a subclass of fangirls enjoy extrapolating that sort of thing, Sastiel, I think they call it…"
"I'm not talkin' about him, idjit," snapped Bobby, "I'm talkin' about you."
"…And they are the sworn enemies of… What?" Crowley looked perplexed. "Are you suggesting… no, no, I couldn't possibly, not even for you, darling, no matter what you threaten me with – I'm a demon, I don't have nearly the power of an angel, and I have no idea how to go about healing a damaged Sasquatch from the inside."
"Watch out for the tentacles, is my advice," intoned Dean seriously, licking cream from his fingers.
"Besides, I don't know if anybody over on Tumblr would be interested; what would you even call it? Samley? Crowam? Cram? Have you been spending time over on LiveJournal, love, they're a strange bunch there…"
"No, no, no, ya idjit," Bobby rolled his eyes, "You're not gonna stand in for an angel, fixin' Sam after he does any sort of Trial. You're gonna stand in for Sam."
"…Some of their artwork just boggles the mind… What? What?" whatted Crowley, suddenly looking panicked. "Did I hear you correctly? Are you saying that you… you want me to… do… you want me to do some version of the Trials? The Trials that nearly killed Jolly Green? Are you mad?"
"Oh yeah," nodded Bobby, "I'm as mad as hell. At you, largely. And that's why you're gonna do this. Because I won't have Sam riskin' himself, although I know he would, for his brother – shaddap, boy, I have spoken, and you aint doin' it – and this is your fault anyway, asshat."
"But, but, but what if it kills me?" wailed Crowley.
"Technically, you're already dead," Bobby told him smugly. "Besides which, I'm thinkin' that a demon will be harder to 'kill' than a human, so gettin' you to do this makes sense. Like I said, it's all about context. Besides which besides which," his eyes narrowed, "If you don't do this, I will kill you myself, slowly and horribly: you will know agony, and you will know terror, and then you will die, have a nice day."
"Before you kill him, can he go get more pastries?" asked Dean breezily.
Sam grabbed up the box. "You ate everything in there?" he asked incredulously. "You pig! God, he hasn't even left crumbs!"
"No I didn't!" Dean was adamant. "I gave one of the éclairs to Jimi." Beside the sofa, the dog gave Sam a doggy smile, and licked crème patisserie from his whiskers.
"You gave the dog a chocolate éclair?" demanded Sam.
"Of course not!" scoffed Dean. "I gave him a caramel one. You think I'm stupid?"
"I think you're greedy, you jerk," Sam shot back.
"I was hungry!" complained Dean. "It's all that bein' dead, and being put back in my body, and having to CONSOLE MYSELF with the EMPTY CALORIES of COMFORT FOOD after the EMOTIONAL TRAUMA of having my beloved COWBOY BOOTS wrenched away from me so callously."
"Shaddap, the pair of ya!" yelled Bobby. "God's tits, I'm gettin' too old for this sort of crap."
"We could head to Bordeaux," Crowley suggested, "Good wine, good food, sophisticated women."
"Feet that smell like cheese," added Dean, "Or is it the cheese that smells like feet?"
"As attractive as the prospect of submergin' myself in a vat of robust red sounds," sighed Bobby, "What I will actually do will be to get back to the research, see if I can figure out what exactly needs to be done. You," he indicated Crowley, "Can fetch coffee or get lost, and you," he glared at Dean, "Can stay here, and stay out of trouble."
"There are days, Bobby," Crowley sighed dramatically, "There are days when I wonder if you even give a damn about me."
"Wonder no more," grunted Bobby, "I don't. Now, git."
"Hey, see if you can get my boots back!" said Dean, as Bobby glared at him. With a deeply put upon sigh, Crowley disappeared.
"The only boots you'll be gettin' is one of mine up your ass, boy," Bobby warned him. "Come on, Sam, we got work to do."
"Hey, Bobby, what about if me and Sam do a proper road trip, and we go back there, and I promise I will stay in my own body the whole time, and
squirt squirt squirt squirt
AAAAAAAAAARGH!"
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Sam tried to concentrate on the page in front of him as the strains of Dean picking his guitar and singing in a falsetto voice drifted into the study; the tune might even have been from a song that had been written by someone who was too white to be Asian, and too old to be a beauty, but was definitely busty.
"Back through the ether I went wanderin' once again,
Back to a place I once had been,
I recall a little store that dealt in footwear,
And a pair of cowboy boots that I had seen…"
"You know, that boy's actually got a talent," mused Bobby.
"Hmmmm," went Sam.
"And the boots were all hand-crafted, the uppers and the soles,
The shoes I had were old and thin, worn and full of holes,
And I told myself that one day I would get myself a pair
Of the awesome croc skin cowboy boots that I saw sittin' there…"
"It's something of a pity that it took demonification for him to let it out, and have some fun with it," the old man sighed.
"Hmmmm," went Sam.
"My cowboy boots of croc skin that I went and stole for me,
Although I lost my body, and got all squirrelly,
But Bobby called me idjit and ignored my heartfelt plea:
My cowboy boots of croc skin he took away from me."
"Heh heh," Bobby chortled, "You know, I never would've picked him as a Dolly Parton fan."
Sam didn't go 'Hmmmm." Silently, he stood, and made his way to the living room, where Dean crooned mournfully about losing his cowboy boots.
There was a crash, a twang, and a squawk suggestive of a guitar being smashed over the back of the sofa, if not actually over somebody's head.
"Never would've picked Sam as a fan of The Who, either," Bobby mused to himself. "Oh well, we live and learn."
Poor Dean. Poor Crowley. And poor Bobby, plagued by idjits. Whatever next?
Send reviews to help Fergus the plot bunny along, because Reviews Are The Rhinestones On The Bust Of The C&W Singer Of Life!