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“Who's the liar now?” Crowley says slyly, and Dean scoffs.
He knows they’re supposed to be - fuck it, not friends, but some kind of allies now - doesn’t mean he wants a demon to be able to see through him the way Crowley does.
Apparently, though, Crowley is not interested in talking about Dean tonight. Thank God. Instead, he sips on his ridiculous drink, then sighs.
“She says I've gone soft.”
Dean laughs, looks at him sideways. “You have.”
“What?” he adds, as Crowley looks back at him. “Yeah, maybe it's all the human blood that Sammy pumped into you, you know? Maybe it's, uh - I don't know. I don't know. But the old Crowley, he would have come in here with hellhounds and demons, and he would have blown the roof off the joint. Now? You didn't want to fight. You wanted to talk.”
Crowley is still looking down at his hands, but Dean is no longer checking his movements, calculating his next move, a possible angle of attack. He’s past wondering when, exactly, he stopped seeing Crowley as a threat, and sometimes he thinks that may be a mistake. Not that he’ll live long enough to find out, so whatever. Instead, he closes his hand around his glass, starts talking again.
“And maybe I've changed, too. Here I am playing Dr. Phil to the King of Hell. Never saw that coming.”
He chuckles, but his heart isn’t in it.
“Maybe we're getting old,” says Crowley, in his usual dark and fatalistic tone.
“Never saw that coming, either.”
Dean was trying for humour, but the whole thing comes out wrong, and now it’s all shades of depressing. Better not to go there. He pours himself another glass.
“What is it, huh? Why you letting mommy dearest tie you into knots?”
“Because…” Crowley hesitates, glances at him. “We're family. Blood.”
Ah. So he’s playing that card. He thinks Dean can understand that fucked-up relationship, because, well. Better not to go there either. He’s running out of places to go to, really, but hey, what’s new?
“That's not the same thing. A wise man once told me, ‘family don't end in blood’ but it doesn't start there, either. Family cares about you, not what you can do for them. Family's there through the good, bad - all of it. They got your back…even when it hurts. That's family. That sound like your mother?”
And now Dean is uncomfortable, and he’s given away too much, and Crowley is looking at him again in that way, that we’re the same, you and I look that Dean really doesn’t like. The last thing he wants right now is for anyone else to collapse. He’s the one dying, after all. Why should Sam, or Cas, or even damn Crowley fall apart as well? A hunter, a soldier of God, and the freaking King of Hell. No way they can fall apart. No way.
He glances at Crowley a bit covertly, and there it is, the beginning of that other look on his face, the all-to-human everything is fucked up look. He gets that enough from Sammy, thank you very much. Dean needs things to go back the way they were, and he needs it fast. He downs his glass, pours himself another one.
“This is the last time I'll see you, Crowley. It was stupid of you to come here. After tonight, you get away from me and you stay away, you get it?”
He keeps looking straight ahead, but he can feel Crowley’s shields going up, that quiet sadness swallowed up by a wave of sarcasm.
“That's harsh, Squirrel, after everything we've been through. After that night with the triplets, and all.”
Night with the triplets? thinks Dean, and a sudden memory flashes through his brain - pink lingerie, a cheap bottle of scotch, jazz music. He winces.
“Yes, it was that good. We both enjoyed every second of it,” adds Crowley, who hasn’t missed the disgust on Dean’s face.
He doesn't sound hurt. Of course he doesn’t. He sounds, thinks Dean, like his usual, smarmy self. Mr Drama Queen. Like nothing can touch him. But he’s right. For better or for worse, they built something, the two of them. Crowley can read him, but so can Dean. He knows Crowley. He's seen him break down during that whole blood business. He remembers what Sammy told him. I deserve to be loved. I just want to be loved.
Dean sighs, glances at Crowley, and the way the demon is twirling the white umbrella in his stupid girly drink makes him realize he doesn’t want to break this - this relationship between them. Not really. Not now.
“You don't understand,” he says tiredly. “I'm cursed.”
Crowley makes a little sound, between a sigh and a snigger.
“A curse. It's always something, with you Winchesters.”
“No, I mean-”
Dean stops talking. He hasn’t mentioned this to anyone, not yet. He’s planning on not, not ever. He’s been thinking, vaguely, to just disappear. Now Cas doesn’t have his mojo, it’d be easy. He’s given up. Why can’t they accept that-
“I know that look. Impending doom and approaching death. Cain got to you, didn't he?”
“He-”
But he can’t go on. He can’t even look at Crowley. He wonders, suddenly, wildly, where Sammy is. If things had been different, if the spell had worked, his last words to Sammy would have been those stupid jabs at French movies - an ongoing squabble, but also something Dean would regret. The idea that his brother’s interests and hobbies should be idiotic, not worthy of Dean’s time.
“And now you’re thinking about death again. God, you’re dramatic. Look, I knew something was up when you came out of that barn,” says Crowley, and there's again something in his voice, something which is almost kindness under that patina of scathing disapproval. “That's why I didn't kill you when you didn't give me the blade.”
He adds it an afterthought, as if the thing doesn’t matter at all, and Dean can’t help himself, because his first instinct is always the kick in the teeth, the suicidal brass. Always has been.
“Ah, that’s why? The goodness of your black, black heart? Not the scary, smity angel of the Lord, you mean?”
“Cas and I go way back,” Crowley replies, airily. “He owes me. He wouldn't hurt me.”
He pauses, then, stares at Dean for a long moment, and Dean finds himself looking back at him, and again he hears that distinctive British lilt in his ears, half-forgotten pieces of words. Let’s go take a howl at that moon. He remembers Crowley’s hand on his chest as he started breathing again, those first few moments of his life as a demon, when every sound and smell was so sharp Dean had been afraid he’d die just from the loud knocking of his own beating heart.
And as he looks at Crowley, Crowley looks straight at him, through him, and the demon’s mouth curves slightly downwards in a self-deprecatory way.
“But you would, wouldn't you?” he says in the end. “You would kill me.”
Dean doesn't reply and looks away.
“You would,” insists Crowley. “After all this time together. Squirrel, you break my heart.”
“I am a hunter,” says Dean, roughly, keeping his gaze firmly anchored on the bottles behind the bar. “And you're a demon. The King of Hell, in fact. How did you think it was going to end?”
“Yet you tell me to run.”
It’s almost gentle, the way Crowley says it, and Dean doesn't say anything. He tries to smile, or scoff, or anything, but the soft words have exploded like a grenade in his head. He did tell him to run. He didn’t want to implicate anyone else, he hadn’t wanted to have a plan, and instead-
“I don't think it's me you're upset about. Come on. Spill the beans.”
Dean shrugs, takes a sip of scotch, moves for a refill and finds the bottle is empty. Bloody typical.
“Dean,” says Crowley, and it’s the way he says it, must be, because Dean just feels this - this enough with this shit feeling, this whathefuckever thing in his chest, and just shakes his head and starts talking.
“It's the Mark. Looks like I won't be able to control it for much longer. I’ll lose it, and then - I dunno, ok? I’m supposed to kill people. I’m supposed to become some kind of - and then, at the end, I’ll come after you. And Cas, and Sammy. And then - and then I don't really know. I'll go to hell? Become a demon again? Things are a little hazy here, to be honest. You guys suck with instruction manuals.”
Crowley ignores his attempt at humour. Not that Dean can blame him. It was too little, too late. God, he sounded like a bloody girl. What's the point in complaining, anyway? Grow a pair, son.
“So this is what's bugging you. Not poor old me. The angel, and Moose.”
Dean shakes his head.
The bar is eerily silent around them. When Crowley takes his phone from his pocket and fiddles with it, the noise is much louder than it has any right to be.
“Thing is, Crowley, it doesn't matter if I want to kill you or not.”
“Cheers. I can really feel the love there.”
“I will try to,” continues Dean, ignoring him, “because I must, but I can count on you to run. I know that. I know that if I tell you to run, to stay away, you'll do it. You're a friggin’ demon. It's your skin first, right? You don't care all that much about me.”
Crowley rolls his eyes.
“Is it something I said?”
“But Cas-”
Dean starts the sentence, and then falls silent. He’s not ready to finish that thought. He’ll never be ready. He’d sort of imagined he’d have time to figure it all out, but, well. Life is not fair.
“Cas won't,” says Crowley, with a touch of his old impatience, when it becomes clear Dean is not adding anything else. “Stay away.”
“No.”
“And you don't want to kill him.”
“Of course not,” scoffs Dean.
“Because you love him,” says Crowley, and Dean smiles, a bit lopsidedly, and looks sideways at Crowley again.
“That's a first,” he says. “People always say it the other way round.”
Crowley smiles his half smile, the one he smiles before setting his hellhounds loose and drilling into angels’ brains.
“People don't know you. I do.”
Dean turns in his chair, then, stares at Crowley, and when he realizes the demon isn't joking, there is a flash of pure panic on his face - there and gone in a second.
“I'm not gay.”
“Of course not. You suck men's cocks in dark alleys because you're not gay. Because that’s something straight men do to join the straight men club.”
“I do not-” starts Dean, hotly, but Crowley interrupts him.
“Flagstaff, Arizona, June 25th, 1994. Lafayette, Indiana, May 8th, 1996. Salem, Massachussetts, January 23rd, 1997. Shall I go on?”
Dean can’t take his eyes off Crowley, can’t speak, can’t even feel his own heart beating. He can’t-
“I am not,” he says. “I do not-”
“I know you started for money,” says Crowley, and here it is again, that almost kindness. “To feed your brother when your jackass father forgot about the two of you. I know you liked it. Well, not always, but enough. And I know you still do it, for free, when you manage to get away from Moose for a few hours. You do know that it’s not healthy to be so close to your brother all the time, right? Codependent, a specialist would say.”
Dean is still staring at him. There is nothing, nothing he can say.
Crowley frowns, then flutters his hand in front of Dean’s face, as if waking him up from hypnosis.
“Hello? I am a demon. I am centuries old. I have seen and done everything there is to see and do. Are you under the impression that I find a bit of buggery even remotely shocking?”
Dean shakes his head, like a boxer after a blow.
“How - how do you-”
“You’re hunters. You're the bloody Winchesters. I have been keeping tabs on you for a while. And in Hell, we specialize in blackmail and things, so when you send out demons to do recon, they tend to bring back evidence that can be used against you. Part of the job, Squirrel. Don't take it personally. I didn't really care for that kind of intel - it was in the file, is all.”
Dean picks up the bottle again without looking at it, remembers it’s empty, puts it back down.
“Fine. Whatever. Make your point, then. Since you seem to have a point to make.”
“It’s really not the gay sex, mate. No, what I want to know here is, what are you thinking? What are you doing? Are you hoping anything will come out of it? That an angel can love?”
Love. It become something foreign and a bit dirty in Crowley’s mouth.
I deserve to be loved.
“I am not thinking anything,” says Dean, and he feels aggressive now, he feels mighty ready to punch this bastard and break his jaw against the counter, King of Hell or no King of Hell.
“You love him.”
Dean doesn't reply. His knuckles have gone white against the bottle. One swing, that’s all it would take.
“You know there’s not much you can get in return.”
“In return,” starts Dean, and he’s furious now, vicious. “That’s all you demons think about, right? And then you wonder why nobody loves you - yes, remember that? When you were snivelling in that church - that’s why, Crowley. That’s why people don’t love demons, because you think about what you’re getting in bloody return. I love him, okay? And I don’t want bloody anything in bloody return. That’s how love bloody works. It doesn’t matter if he loves me back, if he can love me back, or anything. Especially not now, it doesn’t.”
Dean knows he’s rambling, knows he’s just said something unforgivable, something he can’t forget about and can’t take back, and he’s desperately hoping Crowley will say something, anything, interrupt him, make him shut up, but Crowley is just sitting there, looking at him with that shit-eating half grin on his face and Dean feels the rest of it blurt out of him.
“It doesn’t matter, because I’m going to be dead soon. There’s no way out. And Cas won’t run, because that’s not who he is, and Sammy keeps egging him on, and they can’t - they can’t -”
There’s no more rage in him. All Dean can feel inside him are these two tugs, the wild panic (I’m gonna die - I’m gonna die - I’m gonna die) and the deep tide of love (I never told him - I’ll never see him again - I’ll not be able to protect him anymore) - they mix up somewhere inside his chest until all the space is taken up, and it’s hard to breathe and he can taste the bile on his tongue.
“So it doesn’t matter if he can - not when I’ll be -”
“Dean?” says a new voice, and Dean nearly jumps out of his skin, because it’s Cas’ voice, and it’s coming from Crowley’s phone, flipped open on the counter.
“I can love you, Dean. I do love you,” says Cas, and the words take a long time to travel to Dean’s brain - it’s a shock, a huge bucket of ice-cold water down his spine - Dean can’t acknowledge that, can’t say anything.
He looks down at the phone instead, shocked, then at Crowley.
“You called him?” he asks, incredulous. “You had him on speaker, this whole time?”
“Dean, can you hear me? Did you hear what I said?”
Cas is talking louder now, his mouth feels closer to the phone, like he did those first few weeks when he could see Dean’s soul and speak a billion languages and still he didn’t know how to use a bloody phone or even a pencil. The memory of it is enough to bring Dean to breaking point, and he shakes his head at Crowley.
“I can hear you, Cas. I didn’t know you were listening, that’s all.”
“Whoops,” says Crowley, and he’s grinning now, a full-fledged know-it-all grin and Dean is going to freaking kill him.
“Dean, where are you?”
It's Cas' voice again. Dean forces himself to focus on it.
“Just some bar.”
“Why didn’t you leave a note? We came back almost one hour ago, and Sam was upset when he couldn't find you.”
“Wait, you’re at the bunker? With Sam? I thought Sam went to see some French movie.”
“Change of plans,” says a new voice - Sammy’s. “Come back here, we need to talk.”
“Son of a bitch,” mutters Dean under his breath, and he glares at Crowley before answering his brother. “Were you listening as well?”
“Listening to what? I was warding the dungeon against angels - we needed a place to store-”
Sam’s voice disappears abruptly.
“Wait, who else is there? This is not your number. Is - are you with Crowley?”
“Hello, Moose. Productive evening, was it? Don’t worry, your brother will be home in a jiffy.”
Before Dean can do anything, Crowley reaches over and flips the phone shut, interrupting the conversation.
“Hey!”
“I’m not paying to hear you and Moose bickering. I spend enough as it is to get coverage in Hell. And I should go, anyway.”
He gets up, waves a hand in a careless gesture, and the bar is suddenly pristine again - tables and chairs back in their places, the pool table clean and happy and ready for a game, the balls already arranged in a neat triangle in the lower end.
“Wait - are you not - you’re not coming?” says Dean, and then he wishes he could take it back - because, really, what the fuck is he doing?
“Sweet of you,” says Crowley, and despite the sarcasm, there’s a kind of smile in his eyes. “I have some business to take care of, though. I’ll knock on your door in the morning, how’s that? So I can hear the cock-up plan those two morons have come up with, and turn it into something clever.”
“I-”
“Think you’ll manage to suppress your homicidal instincts for another day or so?”
“I-”
“Seriously, though,” says Crowley, interrupting Dean again, walking up to him, and now he’s standing too close, way into his personal space, just like Cas used to do before Dean chose to be an idiot and told him not to do that, “Talk to your boyfriend, why don’t you? True love is a rare thing, Dean. Don’t be a fucking coward.”
Crowley takes a step back, looks him up and down, then smirks.
“And get laid. You’re grumpy when you don’t get laid.”
And before Dean can say anything, before the heartfelt fuck you is even formed in his brain, Crowley is gone, has disappeared into thin air, and Dean has to swallow it back, and laugh around it when he realizes that his life is even messier than it was two hours ago. Will you look at that, he thinks, but his heart is not really in it.
I can love you, Dean. I do love you.
No. No, maybe, maybe for bloody once, things have gone slightly better instead of worse.
Let’s find out, he thinks, half nervous, half happy, as he walks out of the bar and into the night.