Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rob Singer pulled into a lorry park at 8:20 PM. This was an insignificant timestamp, unless you were reading the numbers in base 9, which would display 820 as 666. It wasn't that Rob didn't know about base nine—he did, and had done well in his maths classes—but he had no reason to suspect it would be influencing his life much at age 54.

Unaware of the numerological importance of the time he'd parked his vehicle, Rob climbed down out of the truck and trudged through the rain towards the café, or rather, its lights as they shone through the storm.

Stomp. Stomp. Squelch. Stomp.

He'd always hated the rain, especially its tendency to ruin every deer stalking trip he'd ever been on. While his friends had enjoyed great luck during light showers, Rob's excursions had always managed to fall on weekends with brutally nasty weather. On his most recent attempt, he'd pushed on despite the torrential downpour and had wound up losing one of his favorite hiking boots to a particularly vicious and particularly muddy slope. He'd sworn loud enough to hear himself over the thunder as he struggled to return to his car, and twenty minutes later slammed into a deer on the road, thanks to the poor visibility. Although the trip had in fact resulted in a dead stag, it'd buggered the front of his car to hell, and he'd considered it a Pyrrhic victory.

The diner apparently had no functional air conditioning.

"Bollocks," Rob muttered.

The waitress at the counter didn't even look up. She'd heard far worse within the last hour, and at a much higher volume, from a patron who had not wanted yolks with his eggs. "Sit wherever you like, I'll be with you in a moment."

Rob took a seat at a booth beside a window and stared out at the storm. There wasn't a lot he could see past the water, but he did his best to glare at it, all the same. He wanted to be sure he'd thoroughly communicated his hatred towards it.

When he was done glaring, he decided to stare instead, and stared at the laminated menu in front of him. Nothing looked appetizing.

He figured the storm could use a bit more malice hurled its way, and was about to get started on that task when he noticed a eerie glow from behind the dark clouds, and this time, it wasn't lightning.

A long, silver ship descended onto the parking lot, its long legs unlocking in a smooth ballet of technology. It alighted gently on the ground, not far from his truck.

Rob gawked at it. "What in the hell...?"

A ramp extended itself.

Light streamed out.

A figure appeared silhouetted in the hatchway. It walked down the ramp and approached the door of the diner.

If anyone were to press him on the matter, Rob would admit that he read tabloids from time to time, but only with the utmost of scrutiny. Nothing he'd ever come across had indicated that aliens or U.F.O. sightings were even slightly real or legitimate, yet here was an extraterrestrial who'd landed in front of this very truck stop.

The figure opened the front door, which jingled, and stepped into the café. He was clad in luxurious golden robes that shimmered when he walked, and were clearly fashioned from tremendously expensive fabric. If Rob had been familiar with Magic: The Gathering, he may have thought that the outfit looked like something Rebecca Guay may have painted, but 1) Bobby had never, in fact, heard of it, because 2) it was 1984 and Wizards of the Coast did not yet exist.

He seemed young, with short black hair, and frankly looked as if he could've wandered into the diner from a LARP or convention, if Rob hadn't just seen him step off a spaceship.

The robed figure approached him.

"Robert Singer?" he asked.

Rob heaved a sigh. "That'd be me."

The man (alien?) tapped his pen against a spot on the notebook he'd procured from his robes, mouthed words to himself, nodded, and then spoke them.

"You are a beef-wittedly reticent weisenheimer!"

Rob grit his teeth before replying. "Is that all?"

Kevin Tran the Unluckily Prolonged pursed his lips, checked the notebook again, and shook his head. "Nope, got a few more. Let's add 'insufferably long-winded choad', or—"

The sentence never finished leaving his mouth, because Robert's fist was too busy connecting with it.

Outside, the storm clouds continued to gather, as Robert Singer was a minor rain god, and they wanted only to be close to him.

The waitress phoned the cops for the second time that day.

Chapter Text

"It's too obvious."

"So? Who's going to say anything about it? It's not like we're inviting anyone who doesn't already know."

Castiel stared at the various figurine options that stood on the shelf display. "I don't understand why we're shopping. Couldn't we make them exactly the way we want them?"

Crowley snorted. "Takes all the fun out of it, don't you think?"

"I thought you had a thing for magic." Castiel picked up a tiny ceramic statue of a frog wearing a tiara and a wedding dress, inspected it closely, then set it back down.

"Oh, I do. Don't get the wrong idea." Crowley slipped an arm around Castiel's waist and grinned at him. "But you said you wanted this to be as authentic and human as possible, and the frustration of wedding planning is part of the experience."

Castiel pursed his lips. "I'm beginning to regret that statement."

"Nonsense." The catchy refrain of Love Shack emanated from Crowley's pocket. "Hold on, it's the planner." He answered. "Yes?" A pause. "No, damn it, we decided on devil's food. German chocolate isn't the same... No, I-- he did? Hold on, let me ask him." Crowley shot Castiel a look. "Did you tell her angel food again?"

"No." Castiel shifted uncomfortably and reached to toy with a plastic groom who looked like maybe he'd been manufactured on a day when the mold wasn't set quite right. "Well, maybe."

Crowley rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the phone. "Look, why don't we just do two? One angel food, one devil's food. It's thematic. ...yes, on Wednesday. All right. Right, goodbye."

As soon as he'd hung up the phone, Crowley found a set of tacky invitations being shoved towards his face.

"What about these?"

Crowley snorted. "They're just awful enough to be charming. Grab a few packs and we'll go look for shoes."

Chapter Text

Crowley departs the cemetery and within seconds returns to the monster prison. Castiel's not around, for which he's grateful; he's not in the mood to explain what he's been dealing with. He sets down the bag of his own bones beneath a table and scowls.

Bobby Singer had done his homework, for sure. He resents having the tables turned, having his privacy invaded like that. There are things in one's past that simply don't require discussion, and his personal demons were supposed to be long dead and gone.

So to speak.

Gavin had never forgiven him for his mother's death. Despite the excruciating efforts he'd put into attempting to heal her, despite the complicated spellwork he'd agonized over, the French disease had claimed her life. If he'd known then what he knows now, he never would've dealt with the client-turned-crossroads-demon who'd charmed him into being selfish and shallow one pleasantly drunken evening—not when years later he could've traded his soul for her health, instead... or for antibiotics in general.

But then, if he'd been a saint in life, he wouldn't be currently seated on hell's throne, would he?

And in turn, unfair as it was, he'd never forgiven Gavin for unwittingly traumatizing his mother when her hips were too narrow to deliver him properly, when she'd torn and bled from the labor. She'd suffered for months afterward, blaming herself, blaming her husband, withdrawing from daily life and leaving Fergus with tending to an infant and struggling to keep his household and his business afloat.

Her organs failed her when Gavin was seventeen, which left him and his son with seven more years of escalating hatred before hellhounds tracked him down and tore him apart. If he'd been sober when he'd arranged the contract, he might've insisted upon an alternate way out that didn't involve the dogs, but hindsight was worthless so many centuries later.

Castiel appears in the room and distracts Crowley from his thoughts.

"What've you been up to?" he asks, as if nothing has transpired in the angel's absence.

"Accessing heaven's weaponry."

Crowley smiles. "Back to it, then."