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Crowley has been on Earth since the Beginning, when everything was new. He was there when Adam first tasted the fruits of the earth, juice running from upturned lips down dark-skinned chin. He was there when Eve first bit the apple, heard the crunch. Saw her eyes light with knowledge and her heart fly in that briefest moment of unfettered joy.
When they were cast out to wander the desert, he watched them find new tastes, new pleasures. The relief of cactus water slipping with sparse drops over their chins; their bloody grins over tough lizard meat that barely sated the hunger inside. The hunger that they slaked in each other as much as in the food that passed their lips. Eyes closed, mouths open, tasting air as they had their fill.
When their hunger produced offspring, Crowley watched them too. Over decades, centuries, millenia, as they tasted their world. Always learning, always striving, always hungry for more. He watched as hardship made their meals all the sweeter, made their love all the stronger, made them chase those fleeting moments of bliss.
All this to say, Crowley knows what hunger looks like. Knows the faces of satiation, and the fervor with which humans chase them. But never, never, has he seen someone eat like this.
Golden hair hovers over the meat like a halo, casting a shadow longer than it ought. Pale hands hold the flesh like it’s holy; gently, firmly, fingertips stained black with the char of burning skin. Dirtied by coming too close, but eager all the same for more.
“Oh,” breathes the softest voice he’s ever heard, then “OH” exclaims the brightest. Pearly teeth flash as the gate of the angel’s mouth closes again on dead, broken flesh, and a hum of something beautiful echoes as he swallows.
“It’s magnificent,” the angel whispers, his eyes finding Crowley. They’re bright as new stars, those eyes, birthed from the pressure and heat of thousands of years. “I never knew.”
And behind the words, something deeper. Something darker. A life spent wanting, spent yearning and not knowing what for. A life that is not a life, but chooses to live anyway.
“Go on, angel,” Crowley rasps, sipping at blood-red wine. The burn of alcohol in his throat has nothing on the burn of recognition in his chest.
“Indulge.”