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Crowley could say, with no word of a lie, that he was probably the most competent member of his ring. Frankly, he was the most forward-minded his ring had seen since 1988 -- a short time by the reckoning of a Great Lord, but uncomfortably long for anything between that and a Rhymer, let alone a Prince.
It wasn’t the worst Hell had been, not by a long stretch. Business maintained, as it always had, but the possibility of upward mobility had steadily increased. Plenty of older demons, the sorts called Genials, were happy to keep their places, but they’d gotten in early. For someone like Crowley, who had started just above an imp (or so he told himself), upward mobility was your best option if you had a shred of ambition. And he was aiming a lot higher than a Genial. Technically, “Genial” was the shortened form of “genius”, back from when it had meant a being that completely embodied their work. But with the more modern meaning, and almost all demons having come across Ukobach in their time, it was difficult to call many of them “geniuses” with a straight face.
Crowley was a crossroads demon, more competent than most, but he’d fought to get the best sectors to work in. The demons in his office feared him (and rightly so), but they knew that loyalty was rewarded. The personal touch, Crowley reminded them, was what closed sales, and had continued their work through the millenia.
There was, of course, something of a glass ceiling. It could be broken, Crowley was sure of it, but the fact was that Azazel preferred to hire from his children, and Crowley wasn’t one. And some of the projects Azazel had! Crowley had heard of some of them, but personally doubted that any human, Azazel’s kin or not, would be able to comprehend the politics of Hell in the way that someone born to the Pit would. But now Azazel was dead, his pit-born best were dead, and he’d left one of his human-bred children in his stead.
Which brought Crowley back to the situation he was currently facing.
“I need help.” the human -- well, not a human anymore, Crowley reasoned -- said, its (his! Personal touch!) voice projecting nothing so much as complete desperation.
“You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude.” Crowley replied, resisting the urge to snap back at his new boss. What kind of example did it set for Hell if their newest Prince was worse at hiding his emotions than the least imp?
“I guess not.” More complete desperation. Sam had a voice that Crowley found difficult to ignore. He tensed, feeling every bit of his ether scream to SELL SELL SELL!!!! How was a prince supposed to gain respect, let alone fear, if all they projected was client?
“I just…I want to do things, but I miss being home, s’all. And there’s a lot to catch up on.” Sam sighed, and Crowley braced himself for another wave of emotion. This was their fifth meeting in two cycles, and Crowley was past being sick of it. If he heard “this isn’t like home” one more time, he was going to start taking digits off his clients.
Luckily for all concerned, Sam sighing did not result in that. The irritation of a talented psychic with the powers of a demon prince did flatten most of the office ornaments into the second dimension, but at least this time, Sam hadn’t completely wrecked the printer. “Still. Thanks for everything, Crowley. I think these are for you?”
A minimization, a thank-you, and a question, all in the space of four sentences, Crowley thought as he left the office with century-old memos in hand. They were going to be lucky if all that happened was absorption.
Two weeks later, Sam seemed to be coming together. He couldn’t be trusted with any sort of hardware, let alone software, and spent most of his time looking dazed, but he wasn’t calling Crowley in all the time. In fact, when the door was closed, Crowley could pretend that it was before all this, that Azazel was alive and competent, his yellow eyes burning like brands through the Outer Darkness...ah, Crowley was getting sentimental. Maybe they could survive the change-up, after all.
A cycle later, and Crowley received a particularly heavy yank of commanding psychic power. Sam, who had been quiet as a gold Honorius, wanted him back in his office, NOW.
Sam had made his choice, it seemed. Crowley entered, expecting the usual human error, but saw instead a Prince, whose human hide barely contained him and his power. He was no longer dressed in his barely-paralegal Sack suit, but a loose tunic and pants of glittering white. A red fretwork traced up either side of his legs, the only other color in the sleek dark octagon of the office.
The office was no longer a shifting palette of foreman, mechanic, company man, but more resembling a black box theater, the air thrumming with raw energy and everything that Sam needed contained inside of it.
“The instructions on the copier were right.” Sam said. “Embrace chaos. I’m not going back.”
He stood up, a flicker of a crown brighter than any sun Crowley knew above his head. His mouth was that of a predator, the edges of it somewhere above his ears.
“And you are mine, Crawlie.”