Hark! The Herald Angels Croak - 1/1
Hark! The Herald Angels Croak
Rating: R, Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general amusement. Sorry about the holes!
Word Count: 3,738
A/N: Crack!fic belatedly for ‘December 13 - Use at least three of the following elements: candle, gun, snowman, ghost, jewel, river.’ Do I get bonus points for repetition, and setting them to music?
Warning: For language, and possible blasphemy *hides*, and the destruction of popular songs (because the muse just felt like it, okay?)
Setting: San Francisco, CA. Dec 2009
Summary: Karaoke is its own special Hell
There are some things that you need to be drunk to do.
‘Fuck it!’ Dean swore. He spun the wheel hard left and pulled onto the snowy shoulder of some boring no-name road alongside the Sacramento River. He didn’t care what the Hell it was called, or that much more about the city. It just happened to be in the way-his way-of getting to whatever damned seal was popping its cork next.
Fucking demons couldn’t give a guy a break for few days? He’d had it.
Died and went to Hell? Yup. Got the t-shirt, and the invisible scars to prove it.
Got resurrected? Yup. No t-shirt (God apparently preferred skin), but he did have a fucking angelprint seared into his arm (because God apparently wasn’t above one upping the opposition.)
Saved the world? Yup. Yup. And fucking yup. T-shirts from Goodwill, because being a hero didn’t pay for shit.
Set Lucifer free? Um…. Oops?
Dean figured on balance of everything all the Winchesters had lost, given up, or damned well done since the dawn of time (or 1983, which was around then as far as he was concerned), that God needed to cut them some slack.
Typically though, it seemed Lucifer was not as light as a feather, and was instead one heavy motherfucker for an ex-angel and he was ruining Dean’s heavenly scoreboard, even when he damn well knew how to hit dead centre blind-folded, and drunk.
‘Cas! Front and centre!’
Dean stood tall in the grey and gritty remains of the overnight snow, and deliberately ignored a certain little (only marginally taller) brother hovering and twittering nonsense next to him. If Sam’s honorary title was Captain, surname Emo, his middle names just had to be Blah and Blah (possibly hyphenated for extra emphasis when it was Samantha’s that time of the month.) Cpt. B-B.E, bitch for short, kept bleating (Huh. Dean had thought he was supposed to be God’s lamb. Though he supposed it might be a Heavenly thing, Lucifer might like lambs too, but more probably sulphur-roasted over a bloody pit.) Anyway… where was he? Oh yeah, Sam whittering…
‘Cas.’ Dean didn’t bother to keep the warning out of his voice. ‘Get your angelic butt down here!’
Sam shut up, and the world (except for all the cars and people rushing past to do their last-minute Christmas shopping) held its breath and waited.
And waited…
There was an overwhelming sense of… well, nothing really.
‘Cas? Angel, baby? You want I should mention to God about that time down by the river with you and…?’
Sometimes Castiel liked to play it subtle and ghosted in behind your back (minus the saying, ‘Boo!’ part), and sometimes he really liked to make a big entrance, with the lights, the wings, and occasionally an angelic chorus off in the distance (which might just actually be the local Hari Krishnas chanting their thanks to whomever for creating the colour orange.)
This time? Cas, a.k.a A.B., but only to people who were really brave and tough and awesome enough not to flinch when…
If Dean had been holding a candle, it would have blown out with the force of the wind as Castiel’s almost-there raven’s wings fluttered to rest, before folding down behind that dumb drill trench coat (hadn’t Dean talked to him about how leather was the new black?) and disappearing into whatever invisible back pocket he kept them in.
Dean wondered if you could put anything into angel pockets, like spare ammunition, or … oooh … food, and if the pockets could be like a fridge, and …
‘Yes, Dean Winchester?’ Castiel asked frostily. Which though seasonally-Heh!- appropriate in many ways, just reminded Dean of that fucking snowman/card thing he and Dad had had so much trouble destroying way back when.
Dean half expected his next question to be, ‘You rang, Sir?’ like the stiffly unhumorous butler he so often sounded like. Then again, Dean’s more sensible and finely tuned hunter’s senses were also half expecting a well-aimed bolt of lightning.
‘I’ve had enough! I’m tired, and stressed. Sam’s tired and even more stressed.’ Fucking Lucifer. ‘You’re probably tired and stressed too. Hey, can angels get tired, and…? Uh, forget I asked that,’ he suggested quickly as Castiel’s artfully tousled-was there like an angel stylist up there, or something?-curls began to move slightly but ominously.
‘We. Are. Taking. A. Mini-break!’ Dean stated emphatically, keeping his thankfully rubber soled (and totally awesome) boots firmly fixed to the nice, safe, earthy, ground.
The decisive and completely manly tone of his sudden announcement was unfortunately slightly hindered by Sam hissing to Castiel, ‘I didn’t know he was a fan of Bridget Jones. Did you know that?’
Not to mention the completely blank look on the not-so omniscient angel’s face.
‘San Francisco?’
Dean, who’d spent a lifetime enhancing his ignore Sammy skills, closed his ears to the doubt in Sam’s stupidly annoying and piercing voice.
‘Uh huh! San Francisco. The home of everything bright and shiny and gay and… you okay, Sam? You seem to be choking on something.’
‘Nggh… no… I’m fffff…fine.’
Dean glared meaningfully at the idiot in the passenger seat. ‘Good,’ he said shortly. ‘Because I’d hate to think I’d raised me an “insensitive, unpolitically correct” little brother.’ If his voice oozed sarcasm as he threw Sam’s own (totally unfounded - like really) words back at him, Dean was fine with that. And Sam was a fucking giant, so he could just suck it up and take it.
‘Just for that, I’m going to make you wait for it.’ He turned his head around to where Castiel was sitting mournfully, dead-centre of the back seat, continually adjusting and re-adjusting his seat belt so it didn’t crumple his trench coat, and muttering, ‘I’m sure this wasn’t part of God’s plan.’
‘Both of you like surprises, don’t you?’
It was, Dean decided happily, practically perfect in every way. The Mint Karaoke Lounge was a San Francisco institution for a very good reason. Good drinks, great bar staff, cool KJs, and more. The Mint had everything Dean needed to take all of their minds off this whole good and evil thing they’d had going on for years now.
Even God must have agreed with Dean on that, because his baby had made the trip from Sacramento in under an hour. Dean appreciated the heavenly tail wind (and it certainly hadn’t come from Castiel because he was still pouting, much like Sam was as they climbed out of the car to stand in front of the Lounge.
‘Karaoke?’
Sam sounded like he’d just seen a ghost, or a gun-carrying snowman dressed as Santa Claus dash down Market Street clutching a ladies’ handbag followed by an elderly woman in a fur-trimmed pink snowsuit screaming, ‘My jewels! He’s got my jewels! And my mother’s-May she rest in peace-favourite Christmas candle! Stop, thief! Stop! Save my jewels! And my bag! I paid $62.95 on e-bay for that! It’s a Diego River designer original! Stop!’
Dean thought he could have totally taken that snowman if he’d actually been there.
‘Karaoke?’ Sam repeated in a much tinier, and almost frightened voice. ‘Please tell me you’re joking, Dean? You promised me we’d never, ever, do this again. Not after Florida!’
Castiel, who looked a little uncertain, tentatively patted Sam on his broad shoulders.
Dean frowned, because while he had been trying to encourage the angel to embrace his chosen vessel’s human side for some time now, this touching? This touching Sam thing? That had never been on the list. Never.
Dean pushed his way roughly between them. ‘No PDAs,’ he hissed. ‘This is San Francisco. It won’t get you arrested, but it could make you a lot more popular than you’re quite ready for.’ At least until after he got them a few drinks.
Sam looked frightened. Maybe because he was psychic, he’d been able to catch a glimpse of Dean’s imaginary ghost or that red-robed snowman? Or that pink snowsuit?
Castiel still looked like a bemused accountant, so Dean ripped his tie off and tossed it thoughtfully into the rubbish bin outside the entrance where it landed unnoticed on top of: some orange candle stubs with spiders on; a brown paper bag containing a gun that might once upon a time on a grassy knoll not in Mexico have belonged to a lone gunman; a leaking Las Vegas chorus dancing snowmen/showgirls snow dome; a beer-sodden Ghostbusters t-shirt; and a tattered March 1996 Radio City Music Hall Riverdance souvenir programme signed “Keep on dancing! Michael.”
‘Full service bar. No cover charge. No song charges,’ Dean said as if he really cared about being budget neutral like Sam kept insisting upon. What the fuck was the point of having a fake credit card if you couldn’t use it to have a little fun with now and again? ‘So, stop your emo winging you two. We’re going in!’
‘Karaoke,’ Castiel mused intellectually. ‘カラオケ,’ he said particularly unhelpfully. ‘I can see that カラオケ,’ is a portmanteau of Japanese kara 空 "empty," and ōkesutora オーケストラ "orchestra," but what does that have to do with what seems to me to be an establishment that serves alcohol?’ He was twisting around, obviously taking mental notes about the strange social habits humans had.
‘Port…what?’ Dean said as he pushed the clearly multi-fucking-lingual angel and his protesting brother towards the bar as fast as Winchesterly possible. He was going to need to order a lot more drinks than even he had planned on.
‘It means…’ Sam started.
Fucking Stanford know-it-alls.
‘Nuh uh!’ Dean said crisply as he desperately flung his cleanest credit card at a brightly smiling bartender in exchange for 3 pitchers of beer. ‘Do NOT try and explain the angel. Never explain the angel. I don’t care if someone is holding a gun to your head. I don’t care if someone is holding a gun to my head, and threatening to toss my body in the river so that my ghost will haunt you till next Christmas! Never try to explain the angel!’
Sam subsided into a pout, and luckily also into his pitcher of beer. Dean was just grateful that at least that was one habit college students had in common with hunters.
‘I do not see any orchestra pit,’ Castiel said, staring into the top of his beer as if waiting for one to arise out of the top of it, like Esther Williams emerging out of a river or a swimming pool (whatever!) wearing a flowered bathing cap on her head. ‘Perhaps it is a miss-translation? Rather than empty orchestra, they meant…’
‘Just drink the fucking beer!’ Dean snarled. Goddamned literal angels. ‘Bet he Wikied it,’ Dean thought sourly, as he signaled wildly for more alcohol. Any alcohol. He just needed more. And lots of it.
Maybe this wasn’t his best idea ever?
Then again, maybe it was?
Dean grinned evilly as their number finally came up at midnight. Fucking awesome idea!
There was an almost minute possibility that he had had a little too much to drink.
Dean, who thought that size was everything, everywhere, didn’t give a drunken hoot.
Yeeeeehaaaaaaaaah!
Sam just whimpered, and Castiel was definitely a shell-shocked ghost of an angel as the words to “Baby it’s cold outside” scrolled across the giant screen.
After four hours inside The Mint, even Castiel knew what he was in for as he obediently wobbled to his feet ready to make his sad way stagewards.
Sam on the other hand, positively whined like the beer-sodden, but absolutely not gonna sing in public scared little puppy that he was. He had one hand around one of the table legs, the other was clenched tight to the belt of Castiel’s much more rumpled trench coat, stopping him in his tracks. Dean wasn’t sure which of them Sammy expected to save him first, the angel or the table who really had seen it all before.
Dean climbed determinedly to his feet. ‘Just get on the fucking stage, Sammy.’
Dean grinned out at the audience. Yes! They were about to make musical history. The “Brothers Win…”
‘Let’s have a big round of applause for ... The Herald Angels!' the night’s KJ shouted enthusiastically out to the crowd.
The … what?
Castiel hiccupped and shrugged.
As the world, or perhaps only half of San Francisco, but certainly almost all of its tourists, watched a few minutes later, Castiel stood in the middle of the stage and coughed. Discreetly.
‘What?’ Dean hissed as he caught a few smirks from old hands in the audience, as well as some impatient glares from the next group in the queue to perform.
Castiel, unaware of the strength of the fumes he was emitting, leant closer, and muttered. Very, very, discreetly. So discreetly in fact that at first Dean didn’t hear him. Then he didn’t believe what he had heard.
‘You want a…?’
Castiel swayed as he shuffled his feet.
‘Really?’
Castiel nodded, albeit somewhat woozily. Apparently God’s angels weren’t that good at metabolising their liquor.
Although getting everyone, including himself drunk, had been Plan A “Get plastered and forget about being fucking vessels,” Dean hadn’t counted on exactly how drunk his companions might end up being if he kept topping up their drinks every time they blinked. Dean sighed and burped. Looked like he was going to have to do everything as usual. And colour coord…
Sam coughed. Loudly, boozily, and not very discreetly, because he was a ginormous, coughing, dork, who also couldn’t hold his liquor.
Dean didn’t bother to ask (or even hiss), ‘what?’ to his brother. Somehow he just knew, even when he didn’t want to. Know.
Sam loomed. Giraffes were good at that. So was Sam. Sam was a…
Sam loomed closer, and… Oh yeah, Sam was definitely getting up the courage to mutter.
‘Nuh uh!’ Dean ordered sternly, raising one hand to stop Sam doing anything. Any little thing at all. Especially thinking. And looming. ‘Don’t speak! Not to me, or,’ he continued with a glare as he noticed Sam’s beady little eyes brighten and focus on his hand. ‘The hand. Do. Not. Speak. To. The. Hand!’
After a quick nudge from Castiel-when the heck did they decide to become best buddies and gang up on him? Dean blamed the alcohol-Sam widened his eyes, and pouted. Conniving little bitch. Him, and that angel. The angel? Dean blamed on God.
Dean looked across the stage at Frank, patiently waiting in his booth, then back at his angel, and his brother. Both of them standing there hanging off each other looking bashful, and so soul-wrenchingly eager, and hopeful. Not to mention, really, really fussy.
Dean walked over and rummaged in the box that Frank (clearly used to dealing with difficult performers) held out with a quiet snicker. He looked, looked back at you know fucking who, and rummaged some more. One of them was doable. The other? Would just have to stop being a thirteen year-old and deal with whatever Dean gave him.
Fucking demanding divas, both of ‘em.
As the catcalls and cries of, ‘Just do it!’ reached new heights, Dean nudged Sam. Discreetly.
‘If you’re scared, you don’t even have to sing the words at first. Not till you get used to it. I’ll start, and you can just say every last word, okay?’
‘m not scared!’ Sam shouted back at him, unfortunately right into his mike. Which Frank had very nicely turned on for them in advance. Judging by the vindictive look on Sam’s face, Dean was going to have to keep him from thanking Frank later with his own very nice fist. He might also have to keep his own distance from his brother once he sobered up.
‘You tell him, sweetie!’ A woman screamed from the back. ‘Don’t you take no nonsense from your man.’
‘Yeah! Show him, hot stuff!’ Another woman yelled from on top of the bar.
‘Strut it!’ ‘Sing it, baby’ Cried another, and another.
Even Dean started to get nervous right about then.
But just as he was starting to have second, and third, and fourth thoughts, Frank must have had enough of the indecision because he stretched out a hand and hit one of the many switches in front of him. Music blared out of the speakers, and Sam…
After a hissed, ‘I’ll show you scared!’ Sam was suddenly bouncing clumsily forward to the front of the stage; bright pink mike raised defiantly up to his mouth, ready to fucking sing.
And Castiel was inching his way hesitatingly forward to join his new drinking buddy.
Dean had created a monster. Two monsters.
Fuck.
‘Really I can’t staaaaaaaay…’
Fingernails down a chalkboard sounded better than Sam.
‘but baby it’s cold…’
‘OUTSIDE!’
Castiel was shouting, taking Dean’s earlier words to Sam to heart.
‘I’ve got to go…’
‘AWAY!’
‘but baby it’s cold…’
‘OUTSIDE!’
‘this evening has been soo verry…’
‘NICE!’
Castiel really was getting into the swing of it. He was even drawing a smiley in the air to highlight exactly how nice an evening he was having.
As Sam and Castiel continued to create hysteria among the audience, Dean was just grateful that everyone else was too drunk to notice that the trench coated singer’s “invisible” smiley face was still hanging five foot above the stage, twinkling brightly for all of Creation to see.
When the song finally drew to a screeching close, Dean dashed forward to grab his two tone-deaf companions. He needed to get them offstage before they were all lynched by a pitchfork-wielding mob.
‘All riiiiiiiiiiiggggggghhhhhhtttttt!’ Frank yelled, jumping up and down behind his equipment in a paroxysm of delight. ‘I think they deserve another song, don’t you?’
Goddamn it. Now Dean wanted to punch Frank too.
There was nothing else to be done, Dean was going to have to save this terrible twosome, and show everyone how karaoke really ought to be done.
The KJ had to die. Whatever happened to being able to choose your own song? Fucker was just putting things up at random.
He didn’t know any of these songs.
Dean squinted at the words scrolling across the screen. That’d teach him to forget to put his contacts back in. Maybe he could just make up some words to fit? Who’d notice anyway with all these women going absolutely crazy, and throwing their clothes on the stage?
Dean liked it when he had a plan.
‘Grandma got run over by a…’
‘REINDEER!’
‘Gonna get me a gun and shoot that reindeer,’
Dean slipped that one in. Discreetly.
‘Yippee-yi-ya, yippee-yi…’
‘YO!’
‘Ghost herd iiiiiin the…’
‘SKY!’
‘Gonna shoot those ghosts with my gun!’
Dean was an awesome singer.
‘Riders on the…’
‘STORM!’
‘There’s a killer on the…’
‘ROAD!’
‘Shoot him too. With my gun!’
Dean was having to bellow now to be heard over the sound of what seemed like a hundred women screaming, and fainting.
‘Girl ya gotta love your…’
‘MAN!’
‘Take him by the…
‘Dic…’
Dean was good at sensible suggestions.
‘HAND!’
Castiel was a party pooper who liked to hog the spotlight with his big fat sparkly angelically silver mike.
‘Rollin' Rollin' …’
‘ROLLING!’
Angels didn’t approve of dropping letters off words. They were pedantic like that.
‘Movin' Movin…’
‘MOVING!’
‘Keep them doggies movin…'
‘…G! RAWHIDE!’
‘ Don't try to understand…’
‘THEM!’
’Just rope, throw, and shoot 'em with my gun!’
It was a damned crime that Frank used up all his cowboy tracks so quickly. Because, even Dean couldn’t do much with what came next.
‘Oh, the weather outside is…’
‘FRIGHTFUL!’
‘But the fire is so…’
‘DELIGHTFUL!’
‘…But if you really hold me…’
‘TIGHT!’
‘Just mind my GUN!’
Two hours later Dean was down to the occasional forlorn interjection. Sam and Cas were dancing all over the stage, waving to their fucking groupies, and having drunken good time.
Dean blamed it on those stupid microphones. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone with classic black after all?
After another hour Dean was doing some pouting of his own, and was ready to snap. So when the KJ switched back to Christmas carols, and Sammy and Castiel started singing what they clearly thought was their group’s emo theme song, Dean had had enough.
‘Hark the herald angels…’
‘SING!’
Screw it. That song was definitely too close to home.
Dean decided to end the night. His way.
‘Like a candle in the water,
Annie said as she went to get her guuuun.
But then Frosty the Snowman, got killed -
I shot him with my gun!
Then I burnt him, and now,
He’s a Ghostrider in the skyyyyyyyy,
Where the stars are like dia… jewels,
And everybody knows that,
Jewels are a girl’s best friend!
So, cryyyyyyy meeeee a riiiiiiiver,
‘Cos I criiiiiiied a riiiiiiver oooooovvvvver youuuuuuu.’
He was a fucking musical genius! Dean could tell by the way Sam and Castiel’s mouths were open and no sound was coming out, that they knew it too.
The audience was still screaming happily though, so Dean considered that a win too, as he tossed his jacket aside and undid his shirt to cool himself down. Now he had groupies too!
It was another hour again before they managed to make their getaway off the stage and escape the majority of their screaming fans.
Unfortunately they had to make an unscheduled stop three blocks down Market Street to gently peel the last remaining girl off the roof of the Impala. Even Dean found it hard to force himself to drive off into the moonless December night leaving her sitting in the gutter sobbing, ‘Take me with you! I know how to make pie!’
As they left the bright lights of San Francisco behind them, the alcohol buzz began to wear painfully off, and only one of them had enough of a voice left to say what they were all thinking.
‘After this, all I want is a silent night,’ Castiel croaked miserably.
There are some things that you need to be drunk to do.
And there are some things that you wish you were too drunk to remember doing,
particularly when you all wake up the next morning covered in tinsel and…
Sequel: Yes Sir! That's My Santa
Rating: R, Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam, Castiel
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general amusement. Sorry about the holes!
Word Count: 3,738
A/N: Crack!fic belatedly for ‘December 13 - Use at least three of the following elements: candle, gun, snowman, ghost, jewel, river.’ Do I get bonus points for repetition, and setting them to music?
Warning: For language, and possible blasphemy *hides*, and the destruction of popular songs (because the muse just felt like it, okay?)
Setting: San Francisco, CA. Dec 2009
Summary: Karaoke is its own special Hell
There are some things that you need to be drunk to do.
‘Fuck it!’ Dean swore. He spun the wheel hard left and pulled onto the snowy shoulder of some boring no-name road alongside the Sacramento River. He didn’t care what the Hell it was called, or that much more about the city. It just happened to be in the way-his way-of getting to whatever damned seal was popping its cork next.
Fucking demons couldn’t give a guy a break for few days? He’d had it.
Died and went to Hell? Yup. Got the t-shirt, and the invisible scars to prove it.
Got resurrected? Yup. No t-shirt (God apparently preferred skin), but he did have a fucking angelprint seared into his arm (because God apparently wasn’t above one upping the opposition.)
Saved the world? Yup. Yup. And fucking yup. T-shirts from Goodwill, because being a hero didn’t pay for shit.
Set Lucifer free? Um…. Oops?
Dean figured on balance of everything all the Winchesters had lost, given up, or damned well done since the dawn of time (or 1983, which was around then as far as he was concerned), that God needed to cut them some slack.
Typically though, it seemed Lucifer was not as light as a feather, and was instead one heavy motherfucker for an ex-angel and he was ruining Dean’s heavenly scoreboard, even when he damn well knew how to hit dead centre blind-folded, and drunk.
‘Cas! Front and centre!’
Dean stood tall in the grey and gritty remains of the overnight snow, and deliberately ignored a certain little (only marginally taller) brother hovering and twittering nonsense next to him. If Sam’s honorary title was Captain, surname Emo, his middle names just had to be Blah and Blah (possibly hyphenated for extra emphasis when it was Samantha’s that time of the month.) Cpt. B-B.E, bitch for short, kept bleating (Huh. Dean had thought he was supposed to be God’s lamb. Though he supposed it might be a Heavenly thing, Lucifer might like lambs too, but more probably sulphur-roasted over a bloody pit.) Anyway… where was he? Oh yeah, Sam whittering…
‘Cas.’ Dean didn’t bother to keep the warning out of his voice. ‘Get your angelic butt down here!’
Sam shut up, and the world (except for all the cars and people rushing past to do their last-minute Christmas shopping) held its breath and waited.
And waited…
There was an overwhelming sense of… well, nothing really.
‘Cas? Angel, baby? You want I should mention to God about that time down by the river with you and…?’
Sometimes Castiel liked to play it subtle and ghosted in behind your back (minus the saying, ‘Boo!’ part), and sometimes he really liked to make a big entrance, with the lights, the wings, and occasionally an angelic chorus off in the distance (which might just actually be the local Hari Krishnas chanting their thanks to whomever for creating the colour orange.)
This time? Cas, a.k.a A.B., but only to people who were really brave and tough and awesome enough not to flinch when…
If Dean had been holding a candle, it would have blown out with the force of the wind as Castiel’s almost-there raven’s wings fluttered to rest, before folding down behind that dumb drill trench coat (hadn’t Dean talked to him about how leather was the new black?) and disappearing into whatever invisible back pocket he kept them in.
Dean wondered if you could put anything into angel pockets, like spare ammunition, or … oooh … food, and if the pockets could be like a fridge, and …
‘Yes, Dean Winchester?’ Castiel asked frostily. Which though seasonally-Heh!- appropriate in many ways, just reminded Dean of that fucking snowman/card thing he and Dad had had so much trouble destroying way back when.
Dean half expected his next question to be, ‘You rang, Sir?’ like the stiffly unhumorous butler he so often sounded like. Then again, Dean’s more sensible and finely tuned hunter’s senses were also half expecting a well-aimed bolt of lightning.
‘I’ve had enough! I’m tired, and stressed. Sam’s tired and even more stressed.’ Fucking Lucifer. ‘You’re probably tired and stressed too. Hey, can angels get tired, and…? Uh, forget I asked that,’ he suggested quickly as Castiel’s artfully tousled-was there like an angel stylist up there, or something?-curls began to move slightly but ominously.
‘We. Are. Taking. A. Mini-break!’ Dean stated emphatically, keeping his thankfully rubber soled (and totally awesome) boots firmly fixed to the nice, safe, earthy, ground.
The decisive and completely manly tone of his sudden announcement was unfortunately slightly hindered by Sam hissing to Castiel, ‘I didn’t know he was a fan of Bridget Jones. Did you know that?’
Not to mention the completely blank look on the not-so omniscient angel’s face.
‘San Francisco?’
Dean, who’d spent a lifetime enhancing his ignore Sammy skills, closed his ears to the doubt in Sam’s stupidly annoying and piercing voice.
‘Uh huh! San Francisco. The home of everything bright and shiny and gay and… you okay, Sam? You seem to be choking on something.’
‘Nggh… no… I’m fffff…fine.’
Dean glared meaningfully at the idiot in the passenger seat. ‘Good,’ he said shortly. ‘Because I’d hate to think I’d raised me an “insensitive, unpolitically correct” little brother.’ If his voice oozed sarcasm as he threw Sam’s own (totally unfounded - like really) words back at him, Dean was fine with that. And Sam was a fucking giant, so he could just suck it up and take it.
‘Just for that, I’m going to make you wait for it.’ He turned his head around to where Castiel was sitting mournfully, dead-centre of the back seat, continually adjusting and re-adjusting his seat belt so it didn’t crumple his trench coat, and muttering, ‘I’m sure this wasn’t part of God’s plan.’
‘Both of you like surprises, don’t you?’
It was, Dean decided happily, practically perfect in every way. The Mint Karaoke Lounge was a San Francisco institution for a very good reason. Good drinks, great bar staff, cool KJs, and more. The Mint had everything Dean needed to take all of their minds off this whole good and evil thing they’d had going on for years now.
Even God must have agreed with Dean on that, because his baby had made the trip from Sacramento in under an hour. Dean appreciated the heavenly tail wind (and it certainly hadn’t come from Castiel because he was still pouting, much like Sam was as they climbed out of the car to stand in front of the Lounge.
‘Karaoke?’
Sam sounded like he’d just seen a ghost, or a gun-carrying snowman dressed as Santa Claus dash down Market Street clutching a ladies’ handbag followed by an elderly woman in a fur-trimmed pink snowsuit screaming, ‘My jewels! He’s got my jewels! And my mother’s-May she rest in peace-favourite Christmas candle! Stop, thief! Stop! Save my jewels! And my bag! I paid $62.95 on e-bay for that! It’s a Diego River designer original! Stop!’
Dean thought he could have totally taken that snowman if he’d actually been there.
‘Karaoke?’ Sam repeated in a much tinier, and almost frightened voice. ‘Please tell me you’re joking, Dean? You promised me we’d never, ever, do this again. Not after Florida!’
Castiel, who looked a little uncertain, tentatively patted Sam on his broad shoulders.
Dean frowned, because while he had been trying to encourage the angel to embrace his chosen vessel’s human side for some time now, this touching? This touching Sam thing? That had never been on the list. Never.
Dean pushed his way roughly between them. ‘No PDAs,’ he hissed. ‘This is San Francisco. It won’t get you arrested, but it could make you a lot more popular than you’re quite ready for.’ At least until after he got them a few drinks.
Sam looked frightened. Maybe because he was psychic, he’d been able to catch a glimpse of Dean’s imaginary ghost or that red-robed snowman? Or that pink snowsuit?
Castiel still looked like a bemused accountant, so Dean ripped his tie off and tossed it thoughtfully into the rubbish bin outside the entrance where it landed unnoticed on top of: some orange candle stubs with spiders on; a brown paper bag containing a gun that might once upon a time on a grassy knoll not in Mexico have belonged to a lone gunman; a leaking Las Vegas chorus dancing snowmen/showgirls snow dome; a beer-sodden Ghostbusters t-shirt; and a tattered March 1996 Radio City Music Hall Riverdance souvenir programme signed “Keep on dancing! Michael.”
‘Full service bar. No cover charge. No song charges,’ Dean said as if he really cared about being budget neutral like Sam kept insisting upon. What the fuck was the point of having a fake credit card if you couldn’t use it to have a little fun with now and again? ‘So, stop your emo winging you two. We’re going in!’
‘Karaoke,’ Castiel mused intellectually. ‘カラオケ,’ he said particularly unhelpfully. ‘I can see that カラオケ,’ is a portmanteau of Japanese kara 空 "empty," and ōkesutora オーケストラ "orchestra," but what does that have to do with what seems to me to be an establishment that serves alcohol?’ He was twisting around, obviously taking mental notes about the strange social habits humans had.
‘Port…what?’ Dean said as he pushed the clearly multi-fucking-lingual angel and his protesting brother towards the bar as fast as Winchesterly possible. He was going to need to order a lot more drinks than even he had planned on.
‘It means…’ Sam started.
Fucking Stanford know-it-alls.
‘Nuh uh!’ Dean said crisply as he desperately flung his cleanest credit card at a brightly smiling bartender in exchange for 3 pitchers of beer. ‘Do NOT try and explain the angel. Never explain the angel. I don’t care if someone is holding a gun to your head. I don’t care if someone is holding a gun to my head, and threatening to toss my body in the river so that my ghost will haunt you till next Christmas! Never try to explain the angel!’
Sam subsided into a pout, and luckily also into his pitcher of beer. Dean was just grateful that at least that was one habit college students had in common with hunters.
‘I do not see any orchestra pit,’ Castiel said, staring into the top of his beer as if waiting for one to arise out of the top of it, like Esther Williams emerging out of a river or a swimming pool (whatever!) wearing a flowered bathing cap on her head. ‘Perhaps it is a miss-translation? Rather than empty orchestra, they meant…’
‘Just drink the fucking beer!’ Dean snarled. Goddamned literal angels. ‘Bet he Wikied it,’ Dean thought sourly, as he signaled wildly for more alcohol. Any alcohol. He just needed more. And lots of it.
Maybe this wasn’t his best idea ever?
Then again, maybe it was?
Dean grinned evilly as their number finally came up at midnight. Fucking awesome idea!
There was an almost minute possibility that he had had a little too much to drink.
Dean, who thought that size was everything, everywhere, didn’t give a drunken hoot.
Yeeeeehaaaaaaaaah!
Sam just whimpered, and Castiel was definitely a shell-shocked ghost of an angel as the words to “Baby it’s cold outside” scrolled across the giant screen.
After four hours inside The Mint, even Castiel knew what he was in for as he obediently wobbled to his feet ready to make his sad way stagewards.
Sam on the other hand, positively whined like the beer-sodden, but absolutely not gonna sing in public scared little puppy that he was. He had one hand around one of the table legs, the other was clenched tight to the belt of Castiel’s much more rumpled trench coat, stopping him in his tracks. Dean wasn’t sure which of them Sammy expected to save him first, the angel or the table who really had seen it all before.
Dean climbed determinedly to his feet. ‘Just get on the fucking stage, Sammy.’
Dean grinned out at the audience. Yes! They were about to make musical history. The “Brothers Win…”
‘Let’s have a big round of applause for ... The Herald Angels!' the night’s KJ shouted enthusiastically out to the crowd.
The … what?
Castiel hiccupped and shrugged.
As the world, or perhaps only half of San Francisco, but certainly almost all of its tourists, watched a few minutes later, Castiel stood in the middle of the stage and coughed. Discreetly.
‘What?’ Dean hissed as he caught a few smirks from old hands in the audience, as well as some impatient glares from the next group in the queue to perform.
Castiel, unaware of the strength of the fumes he was emitting, leant closer, and muttered. Very, very, discreetly. So discreetly in fact that at first Dean didn’t hear him. Then he didn’t believe what he had heard.
‘You want a…?’
Castiel swayed as he shuffled his feet.
‘Really?’
Castiel nodded, albeit somewhat woozily. Apparently God’s angels weren’t that good at metabolising their liquor.
Although getting everyone, including himself drunk, had been Plan A “Get plastered and forget about being fucking vessels,” Dean hadn’t counted on exactly how drunk his companions might end up being if he kept topping up their drinks every time they blinked. Dean sighed and burped. Looked like he was going to have to do everything as usual. And colour coord…
Sam coughed. Loudly, boozily, and not very discreetly, because he was a ginormous, coughing, dork, who also couldn’t hold his liquor.
Dean didn’t bother to ask (or even hiss), ‘what?’ to his brother. Somehow he just knew, even when he didn’t want to. Know.
Sam loomed. Giraffes were good at that. So was Sam. Sam was a…
Sam loomed closer, and… Oh yeah, Sam was definitely getting up the courage to mutter.
‘Nuh uh!’ Dean ordered sternly, raising one hand to stop Sam doing anything. Any little thing at all. Especially thinking. And looming. ‘Don’t speak! Not to me, or,’ he continued with a glare as he noticed Sam’s beady little eyes brighten and focus on his hand. ‘The hand. Do. Not. Speak. To. The. Hand!’
After a quick nudge from Castiel-when the heck did they decide to become best buddies and gang up on him? Dean blamed the alcohol-Sam widened his eyes, and pouted. Conniving little bitch. Him, and that angel. The angel? Dean blamed on God.
Dean looked across the stage at Frank, patiently waiting in his booth, then back at his angel, and his brother. Both of them standing there hanging off each other looking bashful, and so soul-wrenchingly eager, and hopeful. Not to mention, really, really fussy.
Dean walked over and rummaged in the box that Frank (clearly used to dealing with difficult performers) held out with a quiet snicker. He looked, looked back at you know fucking who, and rummaged some more. One of them was doable. The other? Would just have to stop being a thirteen year-old and deal with whatever Dean gave him.
Fucking demanding divas, both of ‘em.
As the catcalls and cries of, ‘Just do it!’ reached new heights, Dean nudged Sam. Discreetly.
‘If you’re scared, you don’t even have to sing the words at first. Not till you get used to it. I’ll start, and you can just say every last word, okay?’
‘m not scared!’ Sam shouted back at him, unfortunately right into his mike. Which Frank had very nicely turned on for them in advance. Judging by the vindictive look on Sam’s face, Dean was going to have to keep him from thanking Frank later with his own very nice fist. He might also have to keep his own distance from his brother once he sobered up.
‘You tell him, sweetie!’ A woman screamed from the back. ‘Don’t you take no nonsense from your man.’
‘Yeah! Show him, hot stuff!’ Another woman yelled from on top of the bar.
‘Strut it!’ ‘Sing it, baby’ Cried another, and another.
Even Dean started to get nervous right about then.
But just as he was starting to have second, and third, and fourth thoughts, Frank must have had enough of the indecision because he stretched out a hand and hit one of the many switches in front of him. Music blared out of the speakers, and Sam…
After a hissed, ‘I’ll show you scared!’ Sam was suddenly bouncing clumsily forward to the front of the stage; bright pink mike raised defiantly up to his mouth, ready to fucking sing.
And Castiel was inching his way hesitatingly forward to join his new drinking buddy.
Dean had created a monster. Two monsters.
Fuck.
‘Really I can’t staaaaaaaay…’
Fingernails down a chalkboard sounded better than Sam.
‘but baby it’s cold…’
‘OUTSIDE!’
Castiel was shouting, taking Dean’s earlier words to Sam to heart.
‘I’ve got to go…’
‘AWAY!’
‘but baby it’s cold…’
‘OUTSIDE!’
‘this evening has been soo verry…’
‘NICE!’
Castiel really was getting into the swing of it. He was even drawing a smiley in the air to highlight exactly how nice an evening he was having.
As Sam and Castiel continued to create hysteria among the audience, Dean was just grateful that everyone else was too drunk to notice that the trench coated singer’s “invisible” smiley face was still hanging five foot above the stage, twinkling brightly for all of Creation to see.
When the song finally drew to a screeching close, Dean dashed forward to grab his two tone-deaf companions. He needed to get them offstage before they were all lynched by a pitchfork-wielding mob.
‘All riiiiiiiiiiiggggggghhhhhhtttttt!’ Frank yelled, jumping up and down behind his equipment in a paroxysm of delight. ‘I think they deserve another song, don’t you?’
Goddamn it. Now Dean wanted to punch Frank too.
There was nothing else to be done, Dean was going to have to save this terrible twosome, and show everyone how karaoke really ought to be done.
The KJ had to die. Whatever happened to being able to choose your own song? Fucker was just putting things up at random.
He didn’t know any of these songs.
Dean squinted at the words scrolling across the screen. That’d teach him to forget to put his contacts back in. Maybe he could just make up some words to fit? Who’d notice anyway with all these women going absolutely crazy, and throwing their clothes on the stage?
Dean liked it when he had a plan.
‘Grandma got run over by a…’
‘REINDEER!’
‘Gonna get me a gun and shoot that reindeer,’
Dean slipped that one in. Discreetly.
‘Yippee-yi-ya, yippee-yi…’
‘YO!’
‘Ghost herd iiiiiin the…’
‘SKY!’
‘Gonna shoot those ghosts with my gun!’
Dean was an awesome singer.
‘Riders on the…’
‘STORM!’
‘There’s a killer on the…’
‘ROAD!’
‘Shoot him too. With my gun!’
Dean was having to bellow now to be heard over the sound of what seemed like a hundred women screaming, and fainting.
‘Girl ya gotta love your…’
‘MAN!’
‘Take him by the…
‘Dic…’
Dean was good at sensible suggestions.
‘HAND!’
Castiel was a party pooper who liked to hog the spotlight with his big fat sparkly angelically silver mike.
‘Rollin' Rollin' …’
‘ROLLING!’
Angels didn’t approve of dropping letters off words. They were pedantic like that.
‘Movin' Movin…’
‘MOVING!’
‘Keep them doggies movin…'
‘…G! RAWHIDE!’
‘ Don't try to understand…’
‘THEM!’
’Just rope, throw, and shoot 'em with my gun!’
It was a damned crime that Frank used up all his cowboy tracks so quickly. Because, even Dean couldn’t do much with what came next.
‘Oh, the weather outside is…’
‘FRIGHTFUL!’
‘But the fire is so…’
‘DELIGHTFUL!’
‘…But if you really hold me…’
‘TIGHT!’
‘Just mind my GUN!’
Two hours later Dean was down to the occasional forlorn interjection. Sam and Cas were dancing all over the stage, waving to their fucking groupies, and having drunken good time.
Dean blamed it on those stupid microphones. Maybe he shouldn’t have gone with classic black after all?
After another hour Dean was doing some pouting of his own, and was ready to snap. So when the KJ switched back to Christmas carols, and Sammy and Castiel started singing what they clearly thought was their group’s emo theme song, Dean had had enough.
‘Hark the herald angels…’
‘SING!’
Screw it. That song was definitely too close to home.
Dean decided to end the night. His way.
‘Like a candle in the water,
Annie said as she went to get her guuuun.
But then Frosty the Snowman, got killed -
I shot him with my gun!
Then I burnt him, and now,
He’s a Ghostrider in the skyyyyyyyy,
Where the stars are like dia… jewels,
And everybody knows that,
Jewels are a girl’s best friend!
So, cryyyyyyy meeeee a riiiiiiiver,
‘Cos I criiiiiiied a riiiiiiver oooooovvvvver youuuuuuu.’
He was a fucking musical genius! Dean could tell by the way Sam and Castiel’s mouths were open and no sound was coming out, that they knew it too.
The audience was still screaming happily though, so Dean considered that a win too, as he tossed his jacket aside and undid his shirt to cool himself down. Now he had groupies too!
It was another hour again before they managed to make their getaway off the stage and escape the majority of their screaming fans.
Unfortunately they had to make an unscheduled stop three blocks down Market Street to gently peel the last remaining girl off the roof of the Impala. Even Dean found it hard to force himself to drive off into the moonless December night leaving her sitting in the gutter sobbing, ‘Take me with you! I know how to make pie!’
As they left the bright lights of San Francisco behind them, the alcohol buzz began to wear painfully off, and only one of them had enough of a voice left to say what they were all thinking.
‘After this, all I want is a silent night,’ Castiel croaked miserably.
There are some things that you need to be drunk to do.
And there are some things that you wish you were too drunk to remember doing,
particularly when you all wake up the next morning covered in tinsel and…
Sequel: Yes Sir! That's My Santa