Chapter Text
-/-
True to his word, Bobby takes off only a few days later. The easy camaraderie he and John have built up since they got back feels icy now; John once more retreats to his room with the excuse of more binge-watching, and doesn’t bother to see him off when he goes.
A week and a half after Bobby leaves, Crowley appears at his door.
“Found us a case,” he says, pushing past John into the room without asking. John pulls the door to behind him.
“What do you mean us?” he asks.
“Well, okay, I found me a case– here, look–” He hands over his phone so John can see the headline. Animal attack. Crowley goes on. “–It’s a hellhound, obviously, which makes it my jurisdiction, but just in case it isn’t a hellhound, there should be an actual hunter around to care about it. And you’re on your third watch through of Puppet History, so you need to get out of this room.”
“How do you-?”
Crowley smirks, and taps at their shared wall. “The songs are all extremely distinctive, so it’s easy to keep track. Why are you repeating, anyway? There’s tons of stuff for you to get caught up on.”
“I’ve been doing research, actually. The show was just something to listen to in the background.”
Or, rather, the show was meant to make it feel like he wasn’t hiding out alone in his room instead of researching in the library. If he’s got something playing, obviously he’d stay somewhere that he wouldn’t have to worry about disturbing someone else’s research, or having his disturbed in turn.
“Well, if you don’t mind interrupting your regularly scheduled moping, we can be on our way in a jiffy. We won’t even have to drive, unlike Cas I’m not precious about not flying right to where we want to go.”
“I’m not moping,” he protests, but doesn’t add anything else while he grabs his perpetually packed overnight and weapons duffel from beside the door where he keeps them. “All right, let’s get a move on, then.”
“By the way, I’ve already called ahead and booked us accommodations at the hotel we’ll be working at,” Crowley says, then grabs John’s shoulder and teleports them before John can ask for further elaboration.
-/-
While John and Crowley head out to look for a hellhound, Dean is interrupted from cooking breakfast by knocking on the door. He flips over an egg and hollers, “Hey Sammy! Door! My hands are full!”
He thinks he hears Sam answer, and the knocking stops, so Dean goes back to cooking and figures Sam will tell him if he needs to know anything.
Sure enough, it’s a scant moment later that he hears footsteps approaching the kitchen and Sam saying, “Hey, Dean, you’ve got company–”
“So this is where y’all’ve set up shop, ah?” comes another voice– Dean freezes, and turns slowly.
“Benny?” he says quietly, and then, “Benny!”, and he’s across the room in a second, dragging his beloved friend into a back-breaking hug. “Oh my god, what in the hell are you doing here, Benny?”
Benny just laughs. Still held tight, Dean can feel the laugh all around him.
“Your little boy brought me back,” he explains. “And brought me here, so I could see you.”
“Jack brought you?” Dean looks around, as if expecting to see Jack as well, and is disappointed when there’s no sign of him.
“He said he didn’t have time to stop, but to give y’all his love and tell you he’d be by to see you as soon as he’s able to.”
Dean and Sam exchange a look over that– it sounds like more evidence for their theory that something is pushing Jack to hurry, and not just obsession. If it was just obsession, he’d have made time to stop and say hello himself.
Still, the presence of Benny is enough of a balm to the parental worry he feels, and he’s finally releasing his hold on his friend when Benny lights up and says, “There’s even more good news! Here, look–”
And with that, he tilts his head back, lips drawn back from his gums so Dean can see the sheaths that hold his fangs.
Or, the places where such sheaths should have been. Dean stares.
“You’re… human?”
“He said as long as he was putting me back together he could put me back together as any species I wanted. Said he wanted to see how easy it was. So I had him bring me back human.”
Dean could cry. He sort of wants to. He wanted to ask for Benny back already, but Jack had cut them off before he could ask if monsters were included, and ever since he’s been going back and forth in his mind about whether that would be what Benny wanted.
Apparently, Jack was ahead of him.
“So you’re human now?” he asks instead. “That means human appetite. Sit down, I’m making you French toast. We’ll celebrate.”
“If this is the kind of thing I’ve got to look forward to as a human, I’m glad your boy decided to bring me back.”
“I’m glad too,” Dean says, and then grins mischievously. “But this means you’ll have to fight Charlie over which one of you gets to be best man at my wedding.”
“Wedding?!”
“I was going to ask Sam, but he’s Cas’ best man, apparently,” Dean goes on, shooting his brother a mock glare over the betrayal. Sam shrugs.
“He asked first.”
“You and Cas,” Benny says, amusement dripping from his tone.
“Yeah. What’s funny about that?”
“Nothing.” He looks smug. “What happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory, right?”
“Okay time to stop talking now.”
Still in the doorway, Sam looks between them, trying to find an explanation, and decides he doesn’t want to know.
“Okay, cool. I’m gonna go not have anything to do with whatever is being implied here okay byyyye.”
-/-
At the hotel, Crowley takes care of check-in, and a bellhop takes them up to their room. It’s a lot more service than he tends to get from motels.
John feels a little out of place in fancy hotels, but as he looks around the lobby he notices a not insignificant number of guests also in the multiple layers of denim and flannel typically associated with hunters.
“There some kind of event going on here?” he asks. They can’t be hunters themselves; hunters can’t typically afford these kind of digs.
“There’s a convention being hosted here,” the bellhop says. “Some horror novel series.” He stops outside a door and opens it. “This is your room, sirs.”
While Crowley squares up with him, John looks around the room. It is nice. It is a very nice room.
It is also. a single. He rounds on Crowley as the door clicks closed.
“You got us a single?”
“It was the only room available on short notice. Place is booked out for the convention. We were lucky to get this one. Anyway, what does it matter? I don’t sleep, I don’t need a bed.”
True. “So what are you going to do all night? Just sit in the dark?”
“I’m sure it won’t be any trouble to find someone to hook up with at a Supernatural convention.”
“A what? Oh, the book series. Never heard of it. Any good?”
Crowley winces. “We-ell…”
-/-
John folds his arms. “So you’re telling me, everything that happened to my boys from after I left Dean to them defeating God is a book series? Written by God?”
“Drunk and in his underwear, according to Dean,” Crowley confirms.
“And people read it?”
“It has a strong cult following. There are forums. And memes. They practically own Tumblr.”
“And we’re at a convention for people who read these books to gather and meet other people who read these books?”
“I mean, not on purpose, but it does appear that way.”
“Is there a real case, or did you just drag me here to torment me?”
“It’s a real case.” He flicks his wrist, and hands over the folder that appears in his hand. “Two victims killed in animal attacks inside of locked hotel rooms, at two different hotels. Both of them were in town to attend the Supernatural convention, neither of them had contracts on their souls.”
“Which means either a hellhound got loose and attacked them– which begs the question of why those specific victims– or someone brought it here and set it on them specifically. Or, it’s not a hellhound, it just looks like a hellhound attack.”
“All possibilities I have considered,” Crowley says. “I called Mother already regarding the first one. No hounds have got loose from the kennels, so it’s probably not that. She’s also put a moratorium on trips to earth unless summoned, which does help with narrowing down if it was a demon who set it on them.”
“But there are ways out of Hell without being summoned, aren’t there?” John asks. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be needed up here.”
“Of course there are other ways out of Hell. There’s doors and cracks all over the place. Even I don’t know all of them, and I haven’t told Mother about all of the ones I do know– and I daresay she hasn’t told me about all of the ones she knows about, either.”
“Why?”
“Because it pays to have secrets, and the day may come that I have a need to enter Hell without Mother’s approval or knowledge. But the point is, there are ways that a motivated and informed demon could go about reaching Earth with a hellhound. The question is, why. What would be the motive, and why these people? And how many of them are in this?”
“And that’s why you need me,” John guesses.
Crowley nods. “Hunting is seventy five percent detective work, after all.”
-/-
They decide to get a look at the bodies first, and then over to the hotels to inspect the scenes. John has to send Crowley back to the Bunker to fetch his Fed suit, and then has to make him leave the room so he can change– he’s not generally shy about nudity around other men, that got drilled out of him by the Marines, but Crowley flirts with him often enough and brazenly enough that he’s sure he would not only look, but make a big production out of the fact that he’s looking.
“Have you got a badge?” he asks as he leaves the room and joins him, pulling on his suit blazer as he does. He has one, thanks to Dean and Charlie, who made up new badges for all of them.
Crowley included, apparently, because he flashes one of his own. “I don’t normally bother with this sort of facade, but when Cas and I were searching for Lucifer his badge helped. So I had them make me a set when they were making everyone else’s.”
“Not a lot of Federal agents in Armani suits,” John huffs, but doesn’t object as they head out.
He immediately wishes they’d brought one of the cars when Crowley teleports them over to the coroner’s. For one, teleporting makes him dizzy. For another, it’s becoming rapidly apparent to him that his ability to get around right now is completely at Crowley’s mercy.
Still. He makes the most of it. At the door he takes point, introducing them as Agents Deacon and Taylor. Once they’re alone with the corpses, Crowley gives him a knowing grin.
“So that’s where Dean gets it from,” he says. “The codenames, I mean.”
“Taught him everything he knows about hunting,” John says absently, attention more on the bodies than on Crowley.
“Well. That’s not true, is it? They learned plenty from Bobby.”
John shoots him a glare at that, and gets another grin for his trouble.
“So that’s what you two are fighting about.”
“We’re not fighting. Trust me, when we’re fighting, you won’t have to ask why, because he’ll be pointing a shotgun at me and yelling his grievances out loud.”
“That’s what you’re sulking about, then,” he shrugs. “Figured it had to be something like that. Everyone’s been so careful not to bring it up since you got back. Suppose they thought it would hurt your feelings, the way they talked about Bobby being a father to them.”
“Why would it?” John says. “He raised ‘em right alongside me. Not like I didn’t know how they all felt.” He sighs and turns back to the body, but he hasn’t seen anything of note. It’s a hellhound attack. It has all of the markings of a hellhound attack, and nothing whatsoever that makes it stand out. “They’ve been officially listed as his heirs since Dean was ten, and his next of kin since Dean was eighteen.”
“Really?”
John nods. “Helped him with all the paperwork to make it so. Used to be me was listed as his next of kin, but with me hunting the big game I was hunting, there was too big a chance of something happening to me before it happened to Bobby. We knew Dean’d make sure he got taken care of if Bobby needed him and I wasn’t available.”
“Wow. And here I thought…” He shrugs again. “You hear things, I mean. I just assumed…”
“That it was this big secret?” He snorts. “Bobby’s been like a brother to me from the day I turned up on his doorstep. He was listed for guardianship if anything ever happened to me. I’ve always trusted him with them.” He pulls the sheet back up over the body. “He’s the one that didn’t always trust them to me.”
“Hmm,” Crowley says, and for some reason John feels like he just revealed more than he meant to.
-/-
As they step out into the bright sunlight, John asks for Crowley's insight on the bodies. He hadn’t seen anything particularly informative– beyond confirming what they already suspected– but Crowley probably knows more about hellhounds than he does.
“Too right I do,” Crowley says. “I know just about everything there is to know about hellhounds– I used to work in the kennels before I was a crossroads demon. I used to have a breeding pair of my own, before, but your boys killed my Romeo and–”
He pauses, and for a moment looks genuinely distraught.
“...I don’t know what happened to Juliet,” he says mournfully. “I didn’t have a chance to retrieve her after I faked my death and then I died for real and– Asmodeus took over the throne after me, right? That’s what Sam told me. What did he do with her?”
“You named your dogs Romeo and Juliet?”
“Of course, I told you, they were a breeding pair, they had to have lovers’ names.”
“Not really the point I was going for, but okay.”
Crowley makes a frustrated noise. “No– you don’t get it. Mother said there were no hounds unaccounted for in the kennels but if something happened to Juliet after Asmodeus took over she wouldn’t have been in the kennels.”
John’s eyes widen. “You think she might be the hellhound we’re hunting.”
“No! If it is my Juliet, we’re not hunting her. We’re just… looking for her.”
“She’s killed people.”
“Okay? And? She’s a good girl, she only kills who she’s told to kill. Either someone else has taken control of her, and it's not her fault, or she’s trying to survive because I abandoned her, and it's not her fault. Either way, it’s not her fault.”
“That don’t exactly fill me with confidence.”
“Yeah, well I’ve killed people too!” Crowley snaps. “And I did it on purpose, because I wanted to, so if I get a pass then so does Juliet!”
John’s eyebrows migrate up toward his hairline.
“Okay,” he says slowly. “We’ll find her, and figure it out from there. If you think you can stop the killings without killing her, then by all means.”
Crowley stares him down, eyes narrow, and then he stalks forward until there’s no space between them. He’s shorter than John, but imposing enough that John can’t really feel those extra inches of height. He only just stops himself from taking a step back as the tip of an angel blade taps against his sternum.
“If you lay a violent hand on even one hair on her body, I will put you back in the ground and this time I’ll make sure you go downwards. Do we understand one another?”
“We’ll find her and figure it out then,” John repeats. “If the killings can be stopped without hurting her, I’m fine with that.”
They stare one another down for a long moment, and Crowley finally nods, returning the angel blade into his sleeve.
“Alright. Let’s get to work, then.”
-/-
Charlie and Cas have been gone all day working on a project of Charlie’s; they get home late in the afternoon to find Dean, Sam, and Benny gathered in the common room, playing catch-up with Benny over beers. At the appearance of the others, Dean waves them over.
“Hey, c’mere–” He says with a grin, fishing two more beers out of the case and sliding them across the table. “Look who showed up while you were out!” To Benny he adds, “Benny, you remember Cas– and this is our friend Charlie.”
“Benny,” Cas says, voice dripping with reluctance.
“Benny?” Charlie asks at the same time. “Like, your Cajun vampire sidepiece from Purgatory Benny?”
“My what?”
“Oh, right, you don’t have anything to do with the fandom, right. Um. Never mind. Hi! What’s up?”
Benny just grins, and moves over to take her hand, clasping it between his own while he looks down at her. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Charlie,” he says. “Dean tells me that you’re the one I have to fight for honor of best man at his wedding.”
She squares up and gives him a stern look. “That’s right! As Dean’s second favorite of the people he’s not marrying I think it’s my rightful role and sacred duty.”
“Well given that without my supernatural invulnerability I don’t think I stand a chance against you, I won’t challenge you for the title. But I do have a better idea,” he adds, and, turning her slightly away from them, leans over to speak in her far ear, too low for any of them to hear.
As they watch, her expression goes from attentive to a mischievous grin that spreads wider and wider the longer he talks. After a good few moments of this, she nods.
“Yeah. Yeah I think that works.”
“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” Dean groans as they part.
Benny just gives him an angelic smile– though, Dean’s never seen an actual angel smile so innocently– and ignores this as he turns to Cas. The two appraise each other for a tense beat before Benny finally sticks out his hand.
“Good to see you again, Cas,” he says as Cas takes it. “And congratulations on the engagement.” Then he pulls Cas’ hand, tugging him closer so that now he’s speaking in Cas’ ear– though this time, audibly, and at an angle that Dean can still see Cas’ face as he says, “And just so y’all know, what happens in Purgatory don’t have to stay in Purgatory.” He makes eye contact with Cas, then Dean, and winks. “If you don’t want it to.”
Across the table, Sam rolls his eyes.
“Could you guys not plan your Purgatory reunion threesome right in front of my beer, please?”
“Who’s having a threesome?” comes Crowley’s voice from the doorway. He sidles over to join them, grinning in a way that suggests he’s being annoying on purpose. “Feel like adding a fourth? I love a good orgy. Ooh, hello. I think I’d like it even more if you were involved. Hi, gorgeous.”
“Who’s this?” Benny asks.
“This is Crowley,” Dean says, gesturing between them. “Crowley, this is my friend Benny.”
“Benny? Your bisexual awakening from Purgatory Benny?”
“Why does everyone keep–?” Dean tosses his hands up in annoyance. “What are you doing here, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be in Colorado with Dad?”
“Just needed to stop in and get something,” Crowley assures him. “I’m heading back in a moment, I just heard the word threesome and, well, I was all ears. Seriously though, if you and Cas are looking for a third… or fourth–”
“Absolutely not,” Dean and Cas say in unison. Crowley pouts.
“Party pooper,” he says, and vanishes.
-/-
Crowley returns with no fanfare and hands John the glasses. “Should have grabbed these before we left but I wasn’t thinking about you not being able to see hellhounds. Put them on.”
John does. Crowley smirks. “Well now. Aren’t you pretty like that.”
John ignores him, and picks up the folder he’s been going through since Crowley left.
“So, I did some digging while you were out. The vics weren’t just convention attendees– they were scheduled to appear in a panel together.”
“What? How did you find that out? I checked the website, their names weren’t listed.”
“Their names weren’t listed, but their online aliases are,” John explains. He hands Crowley a pamphlet and points to one of the panels. “Look, this says it’s being led by Destiel69, Cassbutt, NBJackKline, and Samwitch. But–” He hands him another page that looks like it’s been torn from a hotel guest book. “If you look here, the guestbook was signed by four people yesterday, all of them appending their aliases after their signature. Notice anything?”
Crowley stares. “Two of the vics.”
“Destiel69 and NBJackKline,” John confirms. “I asked the manager, he said they came in to get a look at the panel room before the convention.”
“So either the hellhound was present when they were there, and it got their scent and went after them, or someone has it out for those panelists.” Crowley takes the pamphlet. “What’s their panel supposed to be? ‘I Reject Your Canon and Substitute My Own: The Art of the Post-Canon Fix-It’. Hmm.”
“I don’t know what any of that means.”
“Don’t worry, I do.” Crowley’s eyes sweep over the rest of the panels and guests, and then his expressions shifts into a grim smile. “And now I think I know who our culprit is.”
-/-
According to John, their best bet is to find the other two targets– Cassbutt and Samwitch. If the other two were indeed targeted for their involvement in the panel, those two will be the next targets.
Fortunately, a quick call to Charlie sees her hacking into the hotel’s computer and only minutes later she has a room number for them. Even more fortunately, it looks like they’re booked together, which will make it that much easier to protect them.
Within fifteen minutes of making the call, they’re outside the suspected targets’ hotel room. Once inside, John takes point to break the news.
“I’m sorry to inform you both that Miss Paige Wesson and Mrs. Jennifer Ryder– known to the two of you as NBJackKline and Destiel69– have been killed as of late last night.”
The other two targets are a man and a woman, early to mid twenties by John’s judgment. Cassbutt, or Vivi Jacobs, sits down very heavily on the end of her bed at the news; Samwitch, legal name Samson Rivers, presses his hands over his mouth in horror.
“How– how did they die?” Vivi asks.
“Animal attack,” Crowley says. “But we have reason to believe they were targeted, and that the two of you might also be in danger.”
“Wh-what?” Samson looks between them. “B-because of the panel? That– no, that can’t be right. I know there are some canon-purist whackadoodles in this fandom bu-but not enough to want to kill over it.”
“Relax,” John assures them. “We have a suspect already.”
“For now, we’re going to move you up to our room to keep you safe.”
It takes a little convincing for the pair to agree to come up to John and Crowley’s hotel room, but once Crowley agrees to let them order room service on his bill, they agree. John and Crowley move a little away while Samson calls the order in from their phone.
“Free food is always the way to go,” Crowley murmurs smugly, but John shakes his head.
“No, it’s not about the food,” John murmurs back. “They’re calling from this room and ordering room service for our room. Now there’s a witness for them being associated with us and visiting our room. It’s a safety ploy.”
“Huh. Smart.” They turn to the two just as they hang up.
“Alright,” Vivi says. “We’ll come with you now.”
-/-
Once in the room, Crowley pulls John aside to whisper to him. “Listen,” he says quietly, glancing over at the pair, who are looking from the single bed to the alleged agents while holding a silent conversation with their eyebrows. Crowley snorts, and goes on, “I’m going to go do a little snooping, see if I can find the hellhound before it’s set on those two. Whatever you do, keep them in this room– my scent’s all over it, and you, so if the hellhound does show up that should at least confuse it long enough for you to send me an sos.”
“What if I can’t get to my phone?”
“Don’t need it. Demons can hear prayers of desperation– just beg me to show up like you mean it and I’ll hear.”
“And if you don’t get here in time? Crowley, I’m not going to risk these two just to save your dog.”
“Then make sure you pray hard enough,” Crowley hisses.
-/-
Leaving John Winchester– of all hunters– alone with people who are almost certainly about to be attacked by a hellhound that Crowley is hoping to keep alive is probably not the smartest idea Crowley has ever had.
Not the dumbest by a wide margin, of course; if he could have a do-over, he’d never tamper with that damned spell, and that’s just the first on the list. Leaving John fucking Winchester to potentially kill his pet doesn’t even compare.
Still, he’s hoping to find her before whoever is setting her on the panelists starts looking for Vivi and Samson, and investigations need to be done, and now he’s put it into John’s head that he can hear his prayers, and needs to leave him alone with that knowledge for a little while.
-/-
At first, John just sits quietly near the door, ears half-tuned-in to Vivi and Samson while his attention is focused primarily on listening out for a potential hellhound. His thoughts, meanwhile, are on Crowley– Crowley and that dog of his.
He doesn’t want to kill Crowley’s pet, he’s finding.
It’s a very unsettling revelation, given his rocky position with Castiel. Castiel is his soon-to-be son-in-law and John can’t stop thinking of him as a monster, but Crowley, former King of Hell, a demon who even as a man committed some truly heinous acts, wibbles his eyes a little at the thought of killing his dog– a hellhound, of all things– and suddenly John can’t help feeling sorry for him. Can’t help wanting to not upset him.
His thoughts are dragged to present company when he hears his name, and then Samson bursts out laughing and says, “I am not an apologist!”
“You so are!” Vivi laughs. “You’re about three shots away from ‘John Winchester did nothing wrong’ and you know it!”
They have all of his attention now.
“Okay, look,” Samson says. “Being an apologist requires some level of apology, right? And I’m not apologizing for anything! I’m just saying he’s only like the fifth or sixth worst parent in Supernatural, but all anyone wants to do is flatten him down into this like… cardboard cutout of whatever daddy issues they’re coping with. Besides, I don’t need to apologize for him because he already did. And everyone always forgets that because Carver Edlund is allergic to character growth.”
“You have a point,” Vivi muses. (Across the room, John wonders who bad parents one through four or five are.)
“Look, okay, I’m just saying, the guy isn’t a monster, he’s just got a metric fuckton of trauma and a terminal case of makes bad choices disease. If he did something about those two things, he’d be fine. But again, Carver Edlund is a coward.”
“Well, that’s what fix-it fic is for,” Vivi shrugs, but their discussion is interrupted at the appearance of room service.
Once they’re alone again, John takes a chance to say, “Sorry, if you don’t mind my asking… what was it you were saying just now? About fixing things?”
“Oh, no no no, okay, it’s not– it’s a genre, right?” Samson turns slightly, angling his body so he can address both Vivi and John at the same time. “It’s fanfiction, Supernatural fanfiction.”
(John knows what fanfiction is because Charlie explained it to Bobby once while he was in the room. He’s glad he doesn’t have to ask now.)
“So, basically,” Samson continues, “The main characters in Supernatural are these two brothers, Sam and Dean, and their dad is John, and he eats it at the end of In My Time of Dying.”
Hearing his death referred to in such a casual, easy way is not doing John any favors. He keeps his face neutral as he asks, “How did he die?”
“Traded his soul to a demon to save Dean’s life,” Vivi says. “Real dumbass move if you ask me.”
John snorts. “Got kids? Either of you?”
“God no,” Samson says. Vivi shakes her head.
“I have. Three sons. You’d be surprised what a man will do to keep his kids safe.”
“Okay, yeah, sure, I get that, but it was so dumb how he went about it.”
“I get that it’s probably just because Edlund hadn’t fully solidified the lore yet, of course, but John is a man who had been studying demons for years,” Vivi says. “He must have known about Crossroads demons, and that ten years is the traditional offer, so why did he summon fucking. Azazel and not literally any other demon?”
John doesn’t say anything, but he is a little embarrassed. They’re right, he did know other summons, he just– figured Azazel would be the one who could actually do it. If just any demon could bring just anyone back to life, surely there would be more people coming back to life, and more people in hell?
He knows better now. But at the time–
“Maybe he was scared,” John goes on. He can’t help himself. “Maybe the very thought of losing his son and knowing that was the only way to save him had him paralyzed with fear, thinking of everything he wouldn’t get with him because of this deal?” He shrugs. “I know if I knew I was about to die and miss everything from here on out, I wouldn’t be thinking clearly either. My boys are everything to me. Not being there to protect them, not being there to make sure they get the life they deserve– I’d probably make some dumbass moves too. So would you, I bet. If you had kids.”
“Okay well that’s maudlin as hell,” Samson says. “But I dig it. I’m stealing that for my fanfic.”
John is about to tell him to go for it, when he hears the tell-tale sound of growling somewhere distant.
Crowley, get your ass back here, he thinks, being sure to cram as much desperation into the thought as he can, and– without really meaning to, adds a rider onto the prayer of, Don’t make me choose between you and the vics.
He’s worried that’s just what will happen, but less than a moment later he hears a voice outside the door, Crowley’s voice, and the growling stops. He nods to the two suspected vics and slips out the door.
In the hallway, Crowley is holding an angel blade at the ready, one hand out in an attempt to coax the hellhound in question still.
“It’s not Juliet,” Crowley says out the corner of his mouth as John approaches. “I don’t want to kill him if I don’t have to, though.”
“You’re the expert,” John says warily, keeping an eye on the hound. “Why isn’t it attacking?”
“Because he knows me. I’m not his master and never was, but like I said, kennelboy. All of the hounds know me.”
“And he’ll listen to you?”
“No, but I’ve got him confused enough to stand down until he’s given another order.”
“How long will that last?”
“Long enough for me to put him to sleep,” and with that, Crowley blows on a little whistle that John hadn’t noticed him carrying. The hound whines at the sound, but as Crowley predicted, it causes it to collapse slowly into a sleeping position.
John moves over to the hellhound to inspect it. He’s never actually seen one, though he’s had more than one encounter with their work– sleeping, it doesn’t look much different than a regular dog, albeit with some interesting lighting.
“I suppose it’s best that it wasn’t my Juliet,” Crowley says. There’s something mournful in the way he says it, and John feels a pang of regret for him. Given how easy it apparently was for him to solve the issue, John wishes it was his Juliet, just so he could be reunited with a creature who clearly means much to him.
That, at least, he can relate to.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Take him back to hell,” Crowley shrugs. “They’ll retrain him in the kennels, he’ll be put back to the service of Hell easily enough.” He nods toward the door. “You can send those two back to their room now. We’ll take care of the actual culprit tomorrow.”
He kneels down beside the dog and lays a surprisingly gentle hand on its side, and then both demon and dog vanish. John turns and heads back into the room to tell Vivi and Samson they can head back.
Once they’re gone, he grabs a beer from the six pack he had room service bring, and takes a seat at the head of the bed, legs stretched out in front of him while he sips at it, gazing into the middle distance while he tries to get his thoughts organized.
The facts, as near as he can tell, are as follows:
1. He does not trust Castiel. He hasn’t trusted him from the moment he learned he was an angel, and his mistrust grew tenfold when he learned of Castiel’s relationship with Dean.
2. Castiel, Bobby, and probably Sam and Dean are all aware not only of John’s mistrust, but also why, and object to him thinking of someone they love as a monster. Which is completely understandable, but isn’t helping him actually deal with the problem.
And 3, probably most damning of all… he’s starting to– well, trust isn’t the right word, not really, but– he’s starting to categorize Crowley in his head as not a monster, something that he has failed to do with Castiel.
And while it’s apparent to him that Dean does love Crowley (Sam he’s less sure of), he doesn’t love him nearly as much as he loves Castiel. And there’s that whole ‘demon, former king of hell’ thing.
So what all of this boils down to is. Well. Maybe he deserves to be seen as the ‘fifth or sixth worst parent in Supernatural’.
(He wants to think about what he’s overheard from Vivi and Samson, the things Samson said about him, but every time he does static buzzes in his ears and he can’t think clearly. He knows he does have to think about it, he just. Doesn’t want to. So he’s thinking about this instead.)
He’s nearly to the bottom of his bottle by the time Crowley gets back. Crowley sits at the end of the bed, and John can tell by the sag of his shoulders that he, too, is in his own head.
It isn’t hard to guess why.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to be reunited with your hellhound,” he says. Back to him, Crowley just shrugs.
“At least she wasn’t killing people. Or being used as a weapon by someone who only sees her as one.”
“But you wanted her back. She’s important to you.”
Another shrug. Crowley says, quietly, as though he doesn’t really want John to hear, but needs to say it to someone, “You know… I’ve never been anyone’s first choice. Not even for my own mother. Not even for King of Hell. But… Juliet. Ever since she was a pup– you know the term pick of the litter? She picked me. Just waltzed right over to me even before her eyes opened, when she was just a wee little sausage of a thing. Shoved her nose into my hand and started chewing on my fingers.”
His shoulders rise, and then fall in a despondent sigh, releasing all of his sorrow and abject misery in one long, slow exhale.
“She chose me, and she was mine– demon’s best friend. She chose me again and again, and I let her down. What if she’s dead? What if Asmodeus killed her? It’s the sort of thing I would have done, in his shoes.”
“If you want,” John says slowly, hardly believing his own ears, “I can help you look into what happened with your– with Juliet.”
Crowley turns a sharp look at him, one of those calculating looks that takes in far, far more than John suspects anyone can guess.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“God, you are a father. Because,” he echoes, in a mocking facsimile of John’s own voice. “Because I said so isn’t a reason.”
“Because I know what it is to want answers,” John replies finally, because somehow he thinks ‘because I want to help you find joy’ probably won’t be taken in its intended spirit, and makes him uncomfortable anyway.
There’s silence after that, heavy, expectant silent, and then Crowley says in a very small voice, “Thank you.”
-/-
Later finds them sitting shoulder to shoulder at the head of the bed, John’s laptop open between them, watching ‘booktube’ videos breaking down the broad strokes of the Supernatural series. It’s an absolute acid trip to hear people he knows, people like his sons, talked about as if they’re fictional characters experiencing planned literary arcs.
Well, maybe not planned. What he’s getting from these videos is that the readers all agree that Carver Edlund wasn’t a very good writer, and the consensus seems to be, as one booktuber put it, “Thanks for the characters, but we’ll take it from here.”
“So are you into this stuff?” John asks. “You seem to know a lot.”
“Not really,” Crowley shrugs. “I read a few of the books years ago, for nefarious reasons, but the real reason I’ve found all this is that when I got back, it seemed like the easiest way to catch up on the stuff no one would think to tell me about since I’d died.”
“Oh. Huh. That’s a good point.”
“Mind you, it’s not reliable,” he adds quickly. “Chuck didn’t write events faithfully into the books– left stuff out all the time, or changed things to suit him. You should see how badly he mangled my death, for one. You can’t really get an accurate impression of the actual details of anything that happened, I just–” He hesitates, and then in a steely way finishes, “I wanted to see if they’d tried to bring me back.”
“Did they?”
“Mother did. Dean… asked.” He shrugs. “It’s fine though. Apparently Cas died that same night, so frankly I’m surprised I even warranted a footnote.”
There’s such bitter resignation in his tone that John doesn’t really know what to say or how to respond. He raises his hand awkwardly, realizes that the angle will render any attempt at contact uncomfortable, and settles for a couple of whatever-is-the-opposite-of-reassuring pats to Crowley’s thigh before moving it back to his own. Crowley, quite understandably, gawps at him.
“You lost your head, mate?”
“I think I was going to go for a shoulder pat but my arm doesn’t move that way.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, what?”
“Nothing, I just… you’re just like them sometimes. And it’s strange, after everything I’ve heard, to realize you’re just some guy most of the time. Social awkwardness and all.”
John rolls his eyes, but the implications send his thoughts back in another direction, so he says, “Crowley?”
“Hmm?”
“Who are the four or five worst parents in Supernatural?”
“How d’you mean?”
“Something Samson said earlier. He said I– or my character– was only the fifth or sixth worst parent in Supernatural.”
“What to know who holds the crown?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, Chuck, obviously. Doesn’t get much worse than that piece of work. And Lucifer is definitely in that top five as well, maybe even the top three, but I don’t know how the kids would measure. But he did try to make Sam kill Jack, apparently, so he’s not getting off of the list.”
“Why did he– you know what, never mind. It’s the devil. I’ll believe just about anything.”
“The other two, no doubt,” (Crowley continues), “Are most likely myself and Mother dearest. Mother probably beats me out just by virtue of me trying to do better when I got the chance and her trying to have Sam kill me–”
“Wait. Sam? Again?”
“Yeah, if you had a nickel,” Crowley snorts. “As for fifth… I dunno. I don’t know the series back to front, just the broad strokes. Dunno who else there is to choose from.”
“Ah. Good to know I’m in like company. I guess.”
Crowley laughs hollowly. “Yeah. The bad parents club. Let’s send club invitations to Mother and Lucifer and Chuck, maybe we can get matching jackets.”
“We have one thing going for us that Lucifer and Chuck don’t, at least,” John tells him. “You tried to do better. And I’m going to do better too.”
-/-
When John finally goes to bed, he awkwardly tells Crowley that he can stay in the room if he wants to.
“Just don’t sit there watching me sleep,” he adds hastily. “It’s creepy.”
Rolling his eyes, Crowley takes his phone out of his pocket and holds it up pointedly before moving over to the couch in the room and settling in. John watches him for a moment, then rolls over so his back is to him and tries to get to sleep.
He has no idea what possessed him to make that invitation, but somehow it doesn’t feel like the wrong choice.
-/-
When Crowley appears in the Bunker’s library, Dean, Cas, Charlie, Sam, and Benny are seated around one of the tables– Sam is odd man out, having dragged a chair over from one of the other tables and sitting backwards on it while they talk. They glance up at his appearance.
“What are you doing back?” Dean asks.
“Your father snores,” Crowley says, dragging a chair over to take the other end of the table.
The comment, for some reason, sets Dean off into peals of laughter. Crowley isn’t sure what’s funny, but Dean’s joy, rare and fragile as spun glass, has always been contagious, and he tamps down the bloom of mirth unfurling in his own chest at the sound, at the fact that he made Dean laugh like that.
And then he remembers that they’ve said he’s family, and decides that it’s okay if they know he’s happy with them, and allows the smallest upturn to the corners of his lips.
In a rare fit of camaraderie, he grabs a beer from the ever present cooler rather than seeking out scotch, and as he cracks it open, asks, “So what are you all working on?”
“Wedding preparations,” Cas says, while Dean waves a clipboard in his hand vaguely in indication. “We’ve finally succeeded in listing everything that will need to be addressed before the big day.”
“None of us really knows much about weddings,” Charlie grimaces. “And next to nothing about actually planning one.”
“Don’t suppose I could have been any help,” Crowley muses. “My wedding was over three centuries ago and I was drunk for it.”
“You were married?” Dean asks. Crowley waves an absent hand.
“Married my master’s daughter, took over the trade when he passed. Did you think my son was a bastard?”
“Kinda.”
“Well. Now you know.” He doesn’t really want to talk about Gavin or… uh…
…
He changes the subject by asking Sam, “What about you, Moose? I’d have thought you’d have been planning your wedding since you were a little girl, surely you could lend your expertise.”
“Ha ha,” Sam says. “What’s even the joke here? You being sexist?”
“That was the general idea, yeah.”
Sam rolls his eyes so hard at that that Crowley worries he’s going to drop them.
“Well, don’t,” he says, which is a really lame comeback.
Dean apparently agrees because he says, “Look, can we just get back to the wedding talk?” He waves his clipboard again. “We were hoping to nail down our priorities.”
“Alright, let’s see it, then.” Crowley flicks his wrist up, and can feel when Dean loosens his grip and allows the clipboard to sail free and close the few feet of space between them. Crowley sips at his beer with one hand while he inspects the list, and then points at part of it, where it says ‘find someone to perform the ceremony’ when he hands it back. “I can do that part.”
Dean raises an eyebrow at him. “You want to perform our ceremony?” He squints suspiciously. “Is this just an excuse to break out the dog collar?”
“You do know me so well,” he smirks, and then shakes his head. “It’s just an offer. But I am ordained, and performing marriages is the right and privilege of any sufficiently high-ranked demon. When I was king I used to perform them all the time. One of my favorite parts of the job. One of the only parts of the job I liked, really.”
“I don’t know what’s weirder,” Sam says. “That you’re apparently ordained, or that Hell has… weddings?”
“Oh yeah. Demons love weddings. Not to mention they’re a great form of torture.”
Dean guffaws at that, and Crowley feels that familiar bittersweet swelling in his chest that he always gets when Dean approves of him– that fleeting feeling telling him he means something, while knowing that, really, he’s nothing more than an afterthought to him.
Still.
“You really seriously want to perform our wedding?”
“Well you won’t let me be best man–”
“Charlie is my best man.”
“I’m well aware. I just mean, if I can’t do that for you, I can do this. This is much less work anyway, so it’s for the best.”
Dean and Cas exchange a look, a discussion in expression only.
“We’ll think about it,” Cas says, and adds hastily, “That’s not a yes.”
“Yes, yes, Cas, I was a father, I do know that ‘I’ll think about it’ doesn’t mean yes.”
“Sometimes I’ll think about it may become a yes.”
“That’s because you are a good father.”
“And Jack knows those are in short supply around here,” Dean says sourly.
It could be self-loathing, of course, but Crowley can practically taste the bitterness in his tone.
“You should cut your old man some slack,” he says, surprising himself as much as them. Oh well, in for a penny, as it were. “He’s trying, you know. You could at least give him a chance to.”
Dean snorts. “Since when are you chummy with Dad?”
Crowley sniffs, deciding to lighten up the impending argument into bickering. “Well unlike some of you Winchesters, John actually knows how to take a bonding moment when he sees one.”
“No he doesn’t.”
“Alright, look.” He gestures broadly. “I’m not saying, oh, just forget all your grievances and forgive immediately. You know me, always happy to hold a grudge. I’m just saying, you can burn a bridge down from one side but when you want to rebuild it you both have to do the work. Which in your case means not shutting him out when he tries to talk to you. Would that be asking so much? Really? You do want to reconcile, don’t you?”
He fixes them both with a firm gaze. The brothers exchange a look. It’s Sam who answers.
“Look, we’re not– we don’t want to shut him out. Of course we don’t. But we also want to make it clear that we’re not going to just roll over and take it just to keep the peace every time he acts out. He can talk to us if he wants to, but unless he approaches to address the issue, we don’t see it as him actually having anything to say to us.”
“All he has to do is apologize,” Dean says. “That’s it. He just can’t. And until he does… we just don’t have anything to say to him, either.”
-/-
Conversation drifts back around to the wedding planning, but as the evening begins to wind down, the wedding conversation gets a little less planny and a little more ‘they’re starting to feel their drinks’.
Somehow or other, it loops around to jokes about Sam being their token heterosexual.
“You saaaaay you support the gays,” Charlie says, “And yet you have never slept with a man before. How curious.”
Crowley chokes on his beer, and then tries to lock his gaze with Sam’s– a feat made impossible by the fact that Sam is suddenly very fascinated by the ceiling.
“Well, that’s– that’s where you’re wrong,” he says, pointing intensely at her. “I h-have been with a man before. And I wasn’t into it, and that’s why I’m sure I’m a heterosexual. Because if you’ve never been with a man you don’t know, but if you have, then you do.”
Dean gives him a sharp, searching look at that, and Crowley decides it’s about time for him to head back to Colorado and make sure John hasn’t died of whatever crawled into his sinuses to make him snore that loudly.
-/-
John wakes the next morning to an empty hotel room, but no sooner does he stumble out of the bathroom with thoughts to where he can get a cup of coffee than the door opens and Crowley enters with a to-go bag and a drink carrier with three cups in it.
“Please tell me at least one of those is for me,” he says, eyeing the cheap cardboard and the cheaper cups hopefully. Crowley hands him one without a word; he murmurs a thanks and then downs half of it in one long go.
“The second one is also for you,” Crowley says, setting down the carrier and taking the third coffee for himself. He hands over the to-go bag. “Thought I’d be a nice roomie and bring you breakfast. It’s bacon and hashbrowns with scrambled eggs.”
John grunts a second thanks and takes the bag over to the table to dig in, still not fully present but at least moreso than before Crowley brought him coffee.
“So where’d you disappear to last night?” he asks in between cup one and two. “Woke up to piss and you were gone.”
“Went back to the Bunker,” Crowley shrugs. “Got bored sitting in the dark so I went to see if there was anything interesting going on.”
“And?”
“Wedding planning.”
“Oh. Right. That’s happening.”
Crowley’s answering smirk says ‘Gotcha!’ He sits down on the end of the bed. “Yes, it is. But you still haven’t come to terms with it.”
“I’m trying, I just. I never thought my boy’d marry a monster. It’s an adjustment.”
Crowley scoffs. “Oh, come off it, Johnny-boy. You and I both know that’s just an excuse.”
“You disagree?”
“If you really had the big problem with monsters that you claim, what am I doing in this room? Why did you decide to come on this hunt with me at all? Why did you let me stay in the room with you while you’re sleeping, and offer to help me find my doggy? If it was just the monster thing you’d be treating me as cold as you are Cas– I was the King of Hell, you know, and that didn’t involve making niceys with my subjects or the souls under my power or any human that crossed my path. I’ve tortured and killed indiscriminately for fun and profit, and I only stopped because it’s the conditions by which I get to be a part of my family. Castiel, for all of his mistakes, always attempted to do what was right. His goal has always been to help people who were suffering.”
He holds his hands out to the side, palms raised, and gives John an angelic smile. “And yet here I sit, while Castiel gets the sort of looks reserved for ruining dairies. Why?”
John raises one arm in a shrug of his own. “I don’t know. I just know that the idea of Castiel marrying my son repulses me.”
“And we’re sure it’s not the gay thi– well, the bisexual thing?”
“Why does everyone think I care about that?”
“No offense, mate, but you don’t exactly come off as the most accepting of fathers. You disowned Moose for going to college. We’re extrapolating.”
“I–” He breaks off, and scrubs a hand over his face. “That’s different.”
“How so?”
“Because Dean fucking men wouldn’t have put him where I couldn’t protect him,” he snaps. Immediately he regrets it, and because he’s trying not to turn every disagreement into a knock-down drag-out, he scrubs a hand over his face again and says, much less heated this time, “Besides, that was a mistake. Can I not be trying not to make the same mistakes this time around?”
“I suppose,” Crowley allows, and there’s just– his tone, sometimes, makes John think he’s reading him like an open book, the kind with big letters and not a lot of words per page. Sometimes it feels like Crowley knows everything he’s not saying and everything he’s not even thinking just by looking at him. It’s uncomfortable. He doesn’t like being so well perceived.
It also makes it very easy for him to push John’s buttons, and he can tell Crowley is studying his buttons so he can push them in the right order. The right order for what, he has no idea. He hopes he can figure it out before Crowley figures him out.
“What are your thoughts on Michael?” Crowley asks suddenly, and something white-hot and visceral shoots through him.
“I trust him about as much as I can throw him,” he growls. Crowley’s eyebrows raise. He’s actually managed to surprise him.
“At least you’re consistent with your hatred for your sons-in-law.”
They fall silent, Crowley studying John closely while he finishes his breakfast. It’s only as he’s scooping up the very last of his hashbrowns in his fork that Crowley speaks again, but not about Castiel this time.
“Do you talk to Mary much?”
“Some,” he admits. “She calls me sometimes, when she needs help on a case or wants to check on everyone without asking directly.” (He’s picked up enough to know there’s a story there, but he doesn’t know how to ask.)
“D’you have any idea how she feels about Dean and Cas?”
“She doesn’t really talk about them, beyond asking if everyone is okay. We mostly talk about whatever case she’s working on, or compare notes on cases we’ve worked on in the past. Or compare notes on Bobby– her Bobby,” he clarifies, because for some reason the Bobby from Apocalypse world is categorized in his head as “Mary’s” Bobby.
(He’s not sure how he feels about Mary’s Bobby. Admittedly they’ve never met in person, but he’s spoken indirectly to him a couple times when Mary was calling to consult on a case and Bobby was with her. He’s heard a lot about him, though, and he can’t help his judgment that his Bobby, the Bobby of this world, is the superior model.)
“Interesting,” Crowley muses. “I wonder how she’s taking the news.”
“Does it matter?”
“A little bit. I’m mostly thinking about Dean and Cas here,” he adds. “Afterthought or not, they’re still my family. I’d like it if Dean’s parents could be on board with their nuptials, if only for their sake.”
“I’m not… off-board,” John says. “Let’s say I’m in the water clinging to the sides but I can’t get traction to climb all the way in.”
He sniffs. “I suppose that will have to do.”
Now it’s John’s turn to study Crowley. He thinks maybe he’s starting to understand him, just a little. There’s more to this than he’s letting on– but that’s just default Crowley, he thinks. Crowley is always playing some kind of game, chasing some kind of agenda. But he’s also more honest than he seems at first glance– even if he is doing this for some kind of gain, John doesn’t think he’s lying about wanting good things for Dean and Castiel.
He gulps down the last of his coffee and moves over to grab his Fed suit from the hook where he left it last night.
“Whatever. Let’s get to work.”
-/-
Crowley’s suspect, it turns out, is a guest at the convention. Crowley finds out which panel room he’s presenting in (big coincidence, he’s on right before the Fix-It panel) and teleports them backstage with little fanfare.
“There he is,” Crowley says, gesturing with his head. He’s brought them into an out of the way nook, a good vantage point but unlikely to be noticed.
The guy in question is a skinny, squirrely looking guy in a blazer and jeans; he’s dressed rather youthfully, but his hair and beard are greying and washed out, and there are lines on his face that denote age. He looks, altogether, kind of pathetic, giving off a faint aura of inescapable dampness. John takes a deep, deep breath. He recognizes that man. He saw his photo in several of the videos they watched last night.
“Is that who I think it is?” he says slowly. “Because if that’s who I think it is–”
“Carver Edlund, author of the moderately popular Supernatural series,” Crowley confirms, and the two begin making their way toward the man as he goes on, “Of course, Carver Edlund is just a pen name for Chuck Shurley, which is of course an alias for…” They stop in front of him, and Crowley gestures at him with a sneer as he looks up at them. “...God.”
“Hey… Crowley,” Chuck says warily. His eyes flicker over to John. “What are you doing back?”
John’s jaw locks in as he stares down at the man, and then like lightning his fist comes out and snaps into Chuck’s jaw. He topples backwards, his chair collapsing under him from the force. He groans from his position on the floor, only very slowly hauling himself back up.
“The hell was that for?” he asks, touching his jaw gingerly.
“That was for the hell you put my boys through,” John says. “Be grateful I didn’t hit you harder.”
Chuck just scoffs at that. “Kettle,” he says, and rolls his eyes. “What did I do to them that was so much worse than anything you did?”
“Killed everyone they ever loved to keep them isolated? Used every plot to try to get one to kill the other? Raptured everyone on Earth so they’d be forced to be alone? Killed their son in front of them? Twice? Left Adam in the goddamn Cage for twelve hundred years? Why don’t you take your pick?”
“Look,” Chuck says. “When you watch a movie, do you expect the characters to just sit around talking about their feelings all the time? Or do you expect something interesting to happen? I mean. You must have played with toys as a kid! Didn’t your, I don’t know, toy soldiers or whatever ever go to war?”
“People ain’t toys, you son of a bitch. And for the record, yeah, sometimes my tin soldiers did sit around talking about their feelings.”
“Really?” Chuck and Crowley both respond in unison, giving him curious looks. Chuck shakes his head.
“Okay, whatever. Did you track me down just so you could have it out with me?”
“Actually, we’re here about the attacks,” Crowley says. He smirks. “Come on. You must have known you’d attract hunters. Should have made it look human.”
“What attacks?”
“On the panelists.”
“Someone’s attacking panelists? Wait, I’m not a target, am I?” His eyes dart around; he backs away a little, and realizes the way they’re looking at him. “Wait, you don’t think that I– I can’t! I don’t have any power left! That kid stole all of it!”
“There are ways to cause trouble without power, mate. Trust me on this one.”
“But I didn’t. I don’t even want to be at this stupid convention.”
“Then why are you?”
“Money,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m powerless now, just a regular schmuck. I have bills to pay.” He grabs his chair and sits back down with a heavy, weary sigh. “After that kid stole my power I had to find some way to survive. And I didn’t want to be like Metatron, digging through trash cans for scraps that even a dog wouldn’t eat.”
“So you started writing again.”
“I never stopped. I just published all the web-exclusive and unreleased books, then wrote down what I could remember of the God-arc at the end so I could wrap up the series. Of course, I didn’t have any way of knowing what happened after my powers were gone so I had to kind of… make up an ending.” He deflates, and adds quietly, “Everyone hated it.”
“I can’t possibly imagine why,” John says drily.
“Yeah, well, the fans have just… completely disregarded the whole thing. And I got accused of queerbaiting and bury your gays because of Castiel’s stupid sacrifice. Like I had anything to do with that. I haven’t had anything to do with anything Castiel does since halfway through the Apocalypse-arc.”
Crowley shrugs. “Maybe if you hadn’t left out… well… what happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory, right?”
Chuck scoffs. “Yeah, that’s what everyone reading a horror novel wants to read, a hunter an angel and a vampire walk into Purgatory–”
“You’d be surprised. They’re engaged now, by the way. Cas and Dean, I mean, not Cas Dean and Benny. Although Benny just got back so… maybe Benny. Interested in seeing how that shakes out, honestly.”
Chuck just looks disgusted. John feels a sudden burst of sympathy for his son and his fiance. It’s not particularly dissimilar to his own reaction, or Mary’s. He makes a note to himself to do better when he gets back home. It’s time he learns to stop looking at Castiel like a monster, even if his every instinct says he is.
“So if you aren’t responsible for the attacks, who is?” John asks. Chuck shrugs.
“How the hell should I know? I’m not exactly omniscient anymore. I didn’t even know there had been attacks.”
Beside John, Crowley purses his lips and looks around the room slowly. John catches his eye and looks a question at him, and gets a shift of an eyebrow in response. He nods.
“I’ll look for them. You stay with His Holyness here.”
-/-
Out on the convention floor, John looks around for any sign of Samson or Vivi. He can’t put eyes on them anywhere, and it’s hard to put eyes on any one person in this crowd– people are dressed largely the same, in hunter’s garb, though there are plenty of other costumes mixed in. Monsters. Black or grey suits, occasionally accompanied by wings. Clothes in fashions that clearly belong to other characters who either aren’t hunters, or are hunters that dress differently than the standard armor. He sees a few solid black suits that are probably meant to be Crowley, but none of them quite manage to capture Crowley’s rakish bon vivant. One woman, almost as tall as Sam, is wearing a purple, full length evening gown and a vibrant red wig pulled into ringlets.
But none of the people he sees are Vivi or Samson, unless they happen to be under the two sheet ghosts running around for some reason.
Oh well, might as well. He stops them with a hand to one’s arm as they walk past him.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m looking for someone. Are you Samson and Vivi?”
The two spectres say nothing, but their heads shake in unison. He lets them go.
“That was creepy,” he mutters, and keeps pushing into the crowd. He wishes he’d thought to grab their number in case they needed to speak to them again– and then he hears a scream from the other end of the hall.
His feet take off in that direction without any say from his brain, fighting his way through the crowd like mud. He sends a plea Crowley’s way, not even having to force the feeling of desperation as he does, and in an instant Crowley is at his side, one hand holding Chuck’s elbow in a vicegrip.
“Heard a scream,” John says, nodding toward the other end of the hall. “Didn’t sound faked.”
Without a word, Crowley flicks one hand, and suddenly, the crowd parts, the people looking baffled at each other as forces beyond their control shove them aside like cheese.
“Go,” Crowley says, not that he has to because John is already sprinting in that direction– his ears are ringing, but as he gets closer he can hear more shouting, and the sound of a dog snarling. He fishes his glasses out of his pocket and fumbles them on one handed while his other draws the angel blade sheathed under his jacket.
He skids to a halt to find Samson and Vivi and a few others pressed up against an emergency door; judging by the snarls and whines and barking and clawing outside of it, there’s a hellhound out there. He takes a quick stock of the situation to assess the damage– there’s blood on a few of them, but Samson seems to be the only one hurt, several gashes torn right through his suit jacket and a v-neck underneath it. He’s standing, but he looks pale, and it’s a miracle his feet are still under him.
“Out of the way,” John orders, flipping the angel blade around. “Get going. I’ll hold it.”
“Okay but that thing’s invisible,” Vivi says. Her feet are scrambling at the floor, trying to find purchase on the slick tile.
“Not to me. It’s after you two, you need to run.”
The group exchange terrified looks, but Vivi nods and grabs Samson, half-dragging, half-hauling him along; the others wait until they’re a ways away before scattering as well.
With no resistance, the door bursts off of its hinges. John is thrown aside from the force, the angel blade skittering out of his hands and sliding across the floor; he course corrects into the fall and rolls up to one knee, assessing quickly. The hellhound is shaking splinters from itself, and then it makes to take off after its targets again.
It doesn’t get to. John launches at it, tackling it to the floor and getting it into a full-Nelson.
It’s huge, much bigger than the one Crowley stopped last night. He wonders where Crowley is, why he wasn’t right behind him, and just as he’s wondering that Crowley appears. At the same time, the hound fights its way out of his grip, knocking him aside and pinning him with a snarl.
It opens its jaws above him, and as steaming drool falls from is tongue and teeth to land on his face, he prepares for the pain of the bite that never comes– because somewhere off to his right he hears Crowley say, in a frantic tone, “Juliet! Down!”
Above him, the hound freezes, apart from the drool that’s coating John more and more by the second. Crowley’s voice moves closer, his tone softer, sweeter, but still frantic.
“Juliet–” he says. “It’s Papa, Juliet. You know me. It’s time to stand down. Come on, Juliet. Sweet girl. Good girl. It’s me, it’s me. You know my voice, you know my scent– come on, good girl, stand down for Papa.”
He’s right next to them now, crouched low, one hand held out in the universally recognized gesture of approaching a strange dog. The hound– Juliet– is watching him warily (this change of position has done nothing for the amount of drool landing on John, though at least it’s missing his mouth now), ears cocked.
Suddenly, she whines, and shoves her snout into Crowley’s open palm. She licks his hand a little, chews on his fingers. Crowley looks like he’s about to burst into tears. John sits up and scrubs his shirttail over his face.
When he pulls the shirt away and puts the now-cleaned glasses back on, the hound is sitting on her haunches, panting away, nubby tail wagging up a storm while Crowley scratches at her neck and ears, muttering affections at her.
“Where’d Chuck go?” John asks.
“Ran off,” Crowley grunts.
“Think he was lying about not having anything to do with the attacks?”
“No. He wouldn’t have been able to control Juliet. Maybe Rothfuss– the other one,” he explains quickly, “–but Juliet is too well trained. Whoever took over her knows their way around a hellhound.”
“Then who–?”
“No idea, mate.” He stands up, then clicks his fingers at Juliet, who leaps into his arms. She’s almost as big as he is; John is forcibly reminded of how strong demons actually are because Crowley, though he looks kind of pathetic and damp himself, is shifting her over to one arm while the other reaches out to help John to his feet.
Something about this makes the world tilt on its axis in John, creating a buzzing under his skin that he tamps down almost on autopilot before accepting the hand and being almost lifted to his feet. He lets go of Crowley’s hand immediately and begins brushing himself off.
“Looks like I’m going to need a new suit,” he says.
“We can take a detour by Marvel’s on the way home,” Crowley says absently. He’s cradling Juliet like a baby now. It’s unsettling.
While they were taking care of the hellhound, the convention had been evacuated.
“So what are we going to do about the witnesses?” John asks. “Several people very clearly saw– or rather didn’t see– a hellhound attacking a convention goer, and these are people who actually know what a hellhound is.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Crowley says. He snaps his fingers, and the fire alarms go off, followed by the sprinklers. The faint whiff of wet smoke filters into the air. He snaps his fingers again. “There. Now as far as anyone can remember, a small fire broke out at one of the presentation stages– faulty equipment, you know how it is– and they were evacuated for their own safety.”
“And Samson? Or can demons heal wounds?”
“If I was possessing him or using a soul's power, I could, but I’d rather not go that route,” Crowley says. “But I think only needing to let one person behind the curtain is better than needing to let a whole convention’s worth.”
He sets Juliet down, then makes a motion around her neck before drawing his hand back, a leash appearing in its wake and a collar around her neck. Leash and collar are both pink. The collar has rhinestones on it. John feels a surge of affection over how fucking weird Crowley is.
“Alright, if that’s the move, let’s go grab Samson before he starts panicking about his wounds and fake memories,” John says, and the two slip out the back door and begin looping around to join the evacuation crowd from the other end.
-/-
When they find Samson, though, there’s no reason to explain anything to him, because his wounds have been healed, and like everyone else, he fully believes the evacuation was due to a fire.
“I thought you couldn’t heal him?” John asks, once they’re away from the crowd again.
“Wasn’t me.” He looks around, and then jerks his head in a direction and begins walking. John follows; when they finally come to a halt around the corner of the building, there’s an angel there. Crowley raises an eyebrow. “Raphael. What brings you here? Nice meatsuit, by the way. Love the new model. Very chiseled. Makes me want to put my tongue places.”
Raphael fixes Crowley with a withering glare, then turns all of his attention to John. “Jack was worried about what might happen if the masquerade was broken at a Supernatural convention, so he sent me to deal with the matter. But you seem to have taken care of the whole problem yourself– I was barely needed, apart from healing that boy.”
“Crowley did most of it,” John says, glancing at his partner. “But thank you for the heal.”
“Don’t suppose you know who arranged this?” Crowley asks. “Our suspect turned out to be a bust.”
Raphael raises one eyebrow approximately one iota, and is silent for a long time before shaking his head and saying, “Whoever did it, they are no longer here.”
“That mean the kids are out of danger?” John asks. Raphael just shrugs, and leaves. John lets out an exasperated noise. “They all like that?”
“Unhelpful bastards? Yeah, all of ‘em. Still, Raphael didn’t smite me, so I’m calling it a win. Ready to go?”
“Soon as we get my things out of the hotel room.”
-/-
They don’t go home immediately once they’ve checked out of their room. Crowley teleports them to Marvel’s new location in Seattle (actually right outside of Seattle, in a tiny alleyway shop just next to the transit center).
“Yech,” Marvel says when he sees the damage to John’s suit. “Fortunately for you, I always keep extras available for my hunters. And I’m quite good at repairs– come on, off with it. I’ll have it fixed up for you in no time.”
He turns and disappears into the back room, while John glances at Crowley and turns away to change. He can feel Crowley’s eyes on him, but at this point he’s ready to get out of his suit– hellhound slobber is viscous and gooey and dries sticky, and he doesn’t want to wear a suit coated in it any longer than he has to.
Fortunately his drawers aren’t ruined– small favors– and in no time at all he’s back in jeans and flannel like God inte– well, maybe not the best turn of phrase.
When he turns around, Crowley is turned away politely. John doesn’t believe it for a second.
“Alright,” he says. “I’m dressed now.”
Crowley turns around and gives him a quick once over before wrinkling his nose. “Liked you better in the suit, to be honest. Don’t know why you hunters are so obsessed with flannel and denim.”
“It’s low-key armor,” Marvel says as he rejoins them, a suit folded neatly over one arm. Crowley’s eyebrows raise, and he looks to John for confirmation. John nods.
“Leather and denim are tough, sturdy materials that protect against glancing blows when we’re fighting, and flannel protects us from the elements when we’re hunting. Not to mention that we’re often in environments that present other hazards. Dressing the way we do offers protection without particularly drawing attention to ourselves, since people write us off as hicks with just a look.”
“To be fair, there’s a higher concentration of hicks in the hunter community than anything else,” Marvel points out. He hands John the suit over his arm. “This one is made to the exact measurements of your previous suit, so it will fit you just the same. I’ll call you when I have the old one repaired.”
“Thanks, Marvel,” John says. “And uh. About the last time we met. I owe you an apology about that.”
“You mean when you kicked down my door because you found out I’m a goblin king?”
“Yeah, that.”
“No hard feelings. I have encountered many parents during my reign, and I much prefer those who object to what my kind do.”
“But you still do it?”
Marvel just raises one shoulder oh-so-slightly at that. “Not every child taken by goblins has a champion to come for them. Good night, gentlemen. I look forward to our next meeting.”
And, quite suddenly, the pair are standing outside the little building, which is now unlit and dusty and has a closed sign on the door.
“Goblin kings,” Crowley scoffs with an eyeroll. “What a dramatic lot.”
John gives him a disdainful side eye. He ignores it.
“So what are you going to do about her?” he asks, gesturing at Juliet. She’s lying at his side, the picture of man’s best friend apart from the fact that she’s smoking, ethereal, blue, and approximately the size of a small horse.
“Guess I can’t take her back to the Bunker,” Crowley muses. “Pretty sure Moose and Squirrel would draw the line there– don’t like hellhounds much.”
They’re silent while they think, both staring down at Juliet thoughtfully. She sniffs John’s shoes, then lays on her side and huffs, nub still waving slowly at her backside.
“I don’t want to take her to Hell, is the thing,” Crowley explains. “I don’t want Mother to have her.”
“Why not?”
“She killed my son. I don’t trust her with my dog.”
“Thought you didn’t like your son.”
“Not when I was human. He got brought back a few years ago. I almost had a chance at a real relationship with him, but then Sam and Dean were insistent that he had to go back to his own time, where he was doomed to die, and I had to send him into hiding instead of just. Being there for him like I should have been to begin with.” There’s bitterness in his tone again, bitterness and anger and self-loathing and regret. He shakes his head. “Anyway, Mother arranged for him to go back anyway, because she knew it would hurt me. So I’d rather not give her the chance again.”
“I thought you and your mother got along now. That’s the impression you keep giving me.”
“We are, for now.” He shrugs. “It’s only a matter of time before the guilt wears off and she goes back to hating me.”
He seems so… resigned, and John chews the inside of his cheek as he wracks his brain for a solution.
“I have an idea,” he says suddenly. He pulls up a set of coordinates on his phone. “Can you take us here?”
The answer is apparently yes, because in a moment they’re outside of a remote cabin not far off a rocky beach in northern Oregon, surrounded on all sides by a high chainlink fence topped by razor wire. Juliet’s leash vanishes with a flick of Crowley’s wrist, and she rises and trots around, inspecting the premises with her head held high.
“Can you ward this place so that she can’t get out and hurt anyone?” John asks.
“Easy enough. What is this place?”
“Safehouse.” He jerks his head in the direction of the back door. “I got a few scattered around, most hunters have one or two. Bobby and I own this one joint, which means it belongs to my boys now, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. Probably don’t even realize it, honestly.”
Inside, the place clearly hasn’t been touched in years, but there are warding signs all over the walls and windows, and it’s not the kind of job he tends to do.
“Or maybe they do.”
“Must have stayed here for awhile when they were hiding out from the Leviathan,” Crowley says, eyeing some of the symbols from the threshold. “It shouldn’t take much to fix the place into a kennel, no. But you’ll need to get rid of some of those wards or I won’t be able to enter myself.” He pauses, and looks down at his feet before adding, “Including this devil’s trap under the welcome mat.”
-/-
It’s either extraordinarily late or extraordinarily early by the time the pair finally get back to the Bunker after setting the wards and getting Juliet settled in. (John had actually dozed off on the couch once the wards were set, half-asleep listening to Crowley and Juliet exploring the little cabin together. It was nice seeing him happy. It made him realize how few of Crowley’s smiles ever actually reached his eyes.)
John only stops long enough to detour to the kitchen and leave a note that they’re back so whoever starts the coffee maker will know to make enough for him too, and then they walk back to their rooms together. Outside John’s door, they both stop.
“This was fun,” Crowley says. “I always enjoy when I get to play at being a hunter, and I think you and I make a really good team.” He beams. For once it feels like a sincere smile. “We’ll have to do this again sometime.”
“Yeah,” John says quietly, almost floored at the difference it makes on him. “Yeah, we will.