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Crowley is done with the Winchesters.
He’s done with Dean’s antics, with the licentious ways he flirts with his car, smooches the frayed steering wheel, and humps the bonnet in the midst of the night, grumbling that it’s fine, what he’s doing is perfectly normal, and he’d better ask one Nathaniel guy if he doesn’t believe him.
He’d seen and heard worst on the few times he took a stroll and decided to see what the brothers were up to, and no amount of humanity he had witnessed so far could have psychologically prepared him to the sight of the self-proclaimed “meat man” frantically kicking his pants off, belt hanging loose, and sticking his human baguette where the sun doesn’t shine, in Baby’s muffler.
Baby.
‘cause, of course, Dean fucking Winchester would give a name to his car, and make sure to moan it while grabbing for purchase, nails barely digging in and patting the trunk as he rushed to give his fuel to a vehicle that had probably seen more of him than every girl he bedded ever did.
It’d take more to break Crowley if he had to be honest.
Something that crawled its claws deep into his ego, prodded his unresolved traumas, remembered him of memories and nightmares he wished he had forgotten and locked behind his façade of smug King of Hell.
But he was done.
Done with Castiel’s sweet scent of marijuana that followed him in a nebula wherever he went, droopy baby blue eyes stoned and awestruck as he blabbed about bees, occasionally replying with a drunk “awesome” whenever he tried to remind him in far from indulging tones of their past alliance.
Done with Samantha’s binge-watch of Veggie Tales, the only show that managed to conjugate his recent devotion to vegetarianism and Christianity, even though he had been rather more than preoccupied when he caught him more than once melancholically eyeing a cucumber, and sigh in what looked like a love-struck sigh.
He needed to get away from their prison of madness before he got any more tangled in their antics and ended up himself snorting cocaine from someone’s buttocks and sticking his cock and the generous three inches he once bartered for his soul in a muffler or, even worse, Larry the Cucumber’s action figure.
So detoxification therapy was.
He booked a ticket — Satan forbid he brought any baggage with himself, the one that his mother gave him was already supposedly enough to last for a human lifetime or a few more — and draped in his tailored coat, he marched to the business class, where the steward already prepared a seat for him and served his favorite Craig.
He didn’t expect an intercontinental flight to be fast, but he wasn’t in a rush. And what did it matter if now a cannibal was sitting right next to his seat, and they were both placidly talking about long pig and juicy sausages, not really caring of other passengers catching their metaphors?
This Hannibal fella seemed really nice. A psychiatrist with a master’s degree in gaslight that had spilled enough blood to make Crowley consider taking him up as an apprentice — hell, maybe even turn him into a demon — just to see what would happen.
“Consider”, cause the man was so obsessed with his ranting about God that he wondered what he would have said if he found out God was actually a guy who had spent his last years holed up in a room, living like a rat, eating takeaway and hunched over a laptop, typewriting a gospel that would have speedran to bankruptcy any company who picked the project and made it into a TV show or anything mildly profitable at all.
Not that it was worth sharing.
Hannibal seemed content with staring outside the window, placid maroon irises contemplating the white cloud puffs, unblinking and sometimes opening his notes to graphite sketches of stacked disfigured and mutilated bodies, totems of rotting cadavers inlaid with rose thorns and blossoming magnolia petals. At the center of his thoughts, immovable anchor in the maelstrom, where the rough and fierce traits of a broken man, a void hull imbued with the whisper of a lucid madness, a man grazed by insanity who yet welcomed it with all his body.
He wondered if Dean would benefit from Hannibal’s therapy too.
Chances were the latter would be so disgusted and repulsed from his lack of utter manners, uncontrollable and totally deranged drinking habits, flares of unjustified teenager fury and hectic heat and car-lusting, that he would have turned him into his living’s room couch in lesser than an evening.
It didn’t pass too much time before Hannibal stood up from his seat and walked down the aisle, excusing himself with a courtesy that left Crowley wondering whether he was going for a leak — although he failed to imagine someone like him doing something that didn’t involve killing and cooking, swirling in tangos of blood wine wherever he danced — or just plotting a crew member’s murder.
If he had to take a guess, it was the latter.
Not his problem.
When the plane landed, he offered Mr. Lecter a strong handshake, smooth palms cupping his cold-blooded knuckles, and for a lingering second he could feel the pernicious intentions crawling beneath his tapered fingers, and the blood steadily pumping in his veins and itching for a hunt, indomitable hound prancing to be released.
Hannibal didn’t like orders, and demanding obedience from a soul already promised to his realm would have done him no good in that situation.
But their glances both seemed to agree that if Fate bought them together to England, it wasn’t only to take a quick vacation from the madness that had been plaguing their lives, even though one was running from it, whilst the other was very much an enabler, amateur chef with a curriculum vitae so lethal it would have undoubtedly earned Dick Roman’s praise.
“I need a personal favor, Doctor Lecter”.
Details weren’t discussed aloud.
Lecter knew what had to be done and ecstatically throbbed to get started, well-aware life had blessed him with the momentary company of a devil in a tailored coat and dressed in a nebula of expensive cologne. There was an enthralling, orgasmic trance in knowing for once Hannibal could gloat in the rapturous sight of puny, distasteful humans clinging onto the silver thread of life, begging for salvation, reaching for a light that drew further from them with every breath dragging them down.
So he obeyed.
Silently nodded and elegantly wrapped his fingers around the demon’s, and suavely stepped into the nearest limo, no questions asked as a minion drove them to IKEA, their steady silence disrupted only by the exquisite sips of aged scotch that Crowley downed, taking in the scenery of a land that had yet to reclaim.
Hell, he bid Alaska back at the auction for the Word of God, but he should have known better that the darn tablet wasn’t worth a square feet of it — pale and a bridge to nowhere, the bloody auctioneer had the audacity to call it. Things would have been different, had he possessed and bid England.
But life was cruel, and every time he thought he finally found the opportunity of a lifetime to seduce and claim for his Kingdom the soul of the living incarnation of evil on Earth — Queen Elizabeth II a creature that no monster retched from the deepest vicious profundities of Purgatory or the wretches of Hell dared to come close — the Winchesters just had to go and do something recklessly idiotic.
With people like Hannibal Lecter at large and that Yagami kid in Japan farming souls so quickly and efficiently that made reapers fight over winning the “Employee of the Month” award, he was surprised the idiots just insisted on haunting shapeshifters and werewolves across the States, and yet still managed to find time to break a seal or two, call the apocalypse down onto the world twice, piss off ancient gods, angels, demons and leviathans alike, and fuck their cars or Larry the Cucumber while high on drugs, or whatever kids thought was hip nowadays.
The limo parked right in front of the IKEA® store.
Crowley felt somehow nervous knowing that he and Doctor Lecter represented the epitome of the average customer, queer couple hand in hand, walking right into the lair of knickknacks and trinkets, cheap wooden frames for pictures of plaster lives never lived and sharp, lucid kitchen utensils that caught the psychiatrist’s glimmering glaze more than once.
“We’ve got work to do”, tugging his fingers ever so slightly, Crowley guided the man past the isles, through a plastic forest of undying and ever-green apartment plants and sparkling fairy lights that dangled from the ceiling against printed and framed stock pictures of waterfalls and metropolis panoramas, “There’ll be time to cull the herd, mate”.
Lecter’s thoughts wandered.
He talked about something that Crowley didn’t quite catch.
Something something about hooking up with Chef Ramsey once.
Well— he didn’t really use the words “hook up” considering how distasteful the man considered them, but he hinted that they once had a rendezvous in his spotless kitchen during Will Graham’s funeral and that something involving balls happened.
Not really sure whether he wanted details or not, he barely kept their fingers twined, feeling the judging stare of a passing-by man in his late fifties, now glaring at them and hissing like a hyena nonsensical homophobic slurs, a bleached bird nest on his head and a stance that seemed just the Walmart-edition of a crazy orange guy that once stroke a deal with his minions.
“Any chance you can prepare a sumptuous dinner with that one?”, he teased, just to see how on board Lecter would be for that impromptu proposition.
Something flashed in his eyes, lighting a crimson blaze in his predatory pupils, before settling back in dark shades of black: “I’m afraid that’s too high of a target even for the Chesapeake Ripper, don’t you think so?”.
Maybe the guy got a point after all, but the Winchesters got away with way worse, and he still wondered why the psychiatrist was chickening on him. Maybe he just couldn’t get it up with Boris Johnson, and he wouldn’t have blamed him for that either ‘cause, let’s be real, even he sent another demon on his place to sign the contract with Mr. Screaming Carrot Demon.
All his worries had been forgotten though, as he brandished between his fingers the object of his lust, a black laptop support that seemed born to be made into an instrument of subjugation, sensual and vigorous plastic bred to hide the three inches of excess that he would have used to seduce Elizabeth Windsor into striking a deal with him.
The Queen of the United Kingdom was more than fitting for the King of Hell.
And he would have taken what he was owed.
He didn’t need a limo to drop by at Buckingham Palace.
Crowley knew exactly what had to be done, and after paying by cash for his BRÄDA Laptop support, black, 16 1/2x12 1/4”, he shared a smug grin with Dr Lecter, lazily acknowledging the eerie gaze the psychiatrist shot at the self-service restaurant nearby, as if its food was retched by the deepest recesses of hell and personally offended his taste and his seven thousand dollars suit.
Gallantly offering him his arm, they walked out of the store like a pair of newlywed spouses.
Dangling from Hannibal’s elbow was a branded paper bag with a ceramic cactus in a box. He babbled something about bringing it as an offer to Will’s tomb, but chances were he would have used the trinket to impale the next person who sneezed without covering their mouth or never apologized for accidentally bumping their shoulder against him.
“It’s been a pleasure doing affairs with you, Mr. Lecter”.
Crowley stood on his tiptoes, as Hannibal leaned over and tapped their foreheads together, in a gesture of intimacy that he didn’t quite get. Something told him that last time he shared that much closeness with a living human being, he had a knife kissing their bowels, plunging in throbbing guts deep to the hilt, tainted with the blood of his daughter and the one of his lover.
But as a demon, his ferocity didn’t touch him. Alastair would have fancied his sadism, although he doubted he’d be able to appreciate his refined taste.
Taking off his coat, he cloaked it around the taller man’s shoulders.
“The pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Crowley”.
Clenching his fingers around the fine tailored fabric, Hannibal held onto it like a promise, as he gazed the demon’s silhouette fading at the horizon, with the laptop support in his hands and an unfaltering resolve dictating his determined steps, disappearing in the foggy distance, among the thin gloomy rain of London.
“We’ll meet again”.
Queen Elizabeth was already done with her daily duties, and after the umpteenth lockdown issued by the government over the warning of a possible strand of Croatoan virus at large, Buckingham palace was frolicking with guards, their fluffy silly bearskin hats dangling back and forth and running the perimeter of the palace’s walls to make sure no one would trespass the confines —Harry and his wife Meghan included.
Counting the seconds left to her afternoon tea, Queen Elizabeth stood from her couch in plebeian human skin and stumbled to the window, catching sight of the guards patrolling around the walls, little feeble ants marching around like a spinner, never stopping, never sitting.
“Hello, Lizzy”
Slowly turning her back, the Queen didn’t bat an eye, as she glanced and beheld the demon proudly standing in front of her, his silky and refined tie unfolded, buttons popped out of the shirt and giving a pretty window of the untamable forest of ebony chest hairs, and handsome garter-belts slapping his villous calves in patent-leather lucid shoes.
Crowley was indeed not wearing boxers, showing his plump and rotund ass to the royal Corgi, not a bark heard as if he was ruptured himself into the silent contemplation of the demonical buns, so soft and still bearing the crimson outline of a spank.
Covering his pudenda, was the laptop support, and if the Queen’s longing stare was anything to go by, she had been looking to that meeting, and her indomitable gaze was now trying to catch a glimpse of the three inches of extra-long Scottish meat hidden behind.
“How long it’s been, Mr. Crowley. You look scrumptious”
Chapped lips sucked on the matte lipstick, tapered fingers now swirling her necklace’s nacre beads through the wrinkled knuckles, contemplating that familiar face that had visited her not long ago. Their accents clashed, wrestled, imperial furies ramming over the ownership of a Kingdom that the woman had no intention of letting go, clutches sunk deep into her roots.
“Don’t you know? The devil wears Bräda”
“A cheap garment that doesn’t suit a King, wouldn’t you say?”
Queen Elizabeth tapped her heels on the expensive carpet, and flashing a pair of silky gloves from her pockets, she daintily brushed the demon’s shoulders, feeling the strong muscle beneath the layer of researched and refined shirt fabric, and elegantly slipping the ivory buttons out of their holes, she revealed the messy trail of selvage hairs running lower and lower.
“I believe we had a pact, my Queen”, Crowley chuckled, and didn’t proffer a word when she kneeled in front of him, vertebrae popping and arms squeaking like an old and unlubricated barn door, eager in unveiling the demon’s Holy Grail that lay behind the plastic barrier of the IKEA ornament, “Philip lays dead. Now it’s your turn to keep the end of the bargain”.
“Show me the goods first”
“So you can plunder me like your lil’ old colonies?”, there’s an edge of tease on the demon’s tongue, the voice of a man who had seen it all, the blood spilled in the name of an Empire built on the strong ivory bones and bitter tears shed for a kingdom that ravaged and pillaged for their undying crown, “No, thanks. I’ve sold my soul for three extra inches below the belt, my lady, and I’m not going to let you chop it off with your nice dentures carved from baby elephants”.
Something silky snuck beneath the BRÄDA Laptop support, black, 16 1/2x12 1/4”, and Crowley gasped when that smoothness touched his rotundities, disdaining the ornament’s inches to focus on something more organic and recyclable than the support’s plastic, the King of Hell’s royal cane now shamefully awakening.
“If you want my soul, come get it, boy”.
Clawed nails sunk into the demon’s tie, and dragging him around with the unyielding force of a woman who still rode fucking horses in her nineties, she slammed him against the nearest table, luxurious mahogany now creaking under the weight of the King, glistening silverware rattling onto the carpet as the Corgi barked at the sheer top energy radiating from the Queen.
Crowley didn’t remember those were the agreements — a kiss, that was how he sealed contracts on a regular basis — but as the Bräda was thrown against the wall and something something moist and bold pink traveled down his Big Ben, he was certain he had already paid the price for that soul himself.
“Hey man! Where’ve you been?”
Sam was crouched on the chair in a position that hurt only by looking at it, and the laptop was playing a replica of Veggie Tales. On the counter, right next to him, stood a defiled cucumber, torn into pieces from inside out, with a face scribbled that once bore the features of Larry the Cucumber.
If Crowley had to take a guess, he looked as done as him.
“Moose”, he slurred instead, dragging his shoes on the cabin’s squeaking floor, “Not. A. Bloody. Word”.
Castiel gave him a look.
Sam and Larry’s honeymoon phase had lasted a week, and from the rustic wooden walls of their house, in the sleepless nights and the quiet November afternoons, if one closed their eyes and listened closely, they could hear the sounds of nature, the tweeting of mountain birds, singing their hymns to the sky, and the calls of mating that Dean growled as he humped the Impala.
It was unfair that Crowley left him in that mess.
But the matte lipstick all over his body and the sorry limpness of his Empire State Building deemed a worthy receipt of how bad his vacation had been. Whatever the demon had stewing majorly backfired.
“Tell your brother I want to introduce him to a needy lass, when he’s done with...”, silence stretching, he listened in the moans and grunts coming from outside, as the silhouette of Dean’s curved back rutted and slammed the Impala’s trunk, “...whatever he’s doing”.
“We called him for lunch a few hours ago. He said he’d be here”, Castiel punctuated.
“...Did he specifically say those words, Cass?”
“He did say he was coming”
Crowley pinched the space between his brows.
“I— No, you know what? I don’t care. Moose”, slamming the Bräda over the counter, he let him have it, “Here. It’s a present. I don’t need it anymore. If anything comes up, do not call me. I need a shower. I feel very dirty”.
Crowley thought he was done with the Winchesters.
But as listened to the blissful sound of the shower, water raining and washing away his sins, he thought the wolves howling and Baby’s engine screeching, the banging at the cheap wooden bathroom door, and Sam’s loud and incredulous screaming weren’t that bad, after all.
“Crowley!”
“Crowley!”
“WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT DESTIEL PUTIN ELECTION DAY KILLED THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND?!”
“Crowley!”
Not. At. All.