(no subject)

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Date: December 27, 1999
Setting: Tadfield Manor, Crowley's Room
Status: Private - John and Crowley
Summary: John gets what's coming to him.

Crowley led John back to his room in silence. Unlocking the door, he pushed the man towards the chair where Bel had refused to sit earlier. He bent to pick up the soul gem and scattered papers and placed them on the bed. Materializing a bottle of whiskey, he handed it to John and went into the bathroom to get cleaned up.

Once there, he stripped off his tattered shirt and medical pants, banishing them to obscurity, and looked at himself in the mirror. Not ready to deal with what he saw there yet, he gave himself sunglasses to hide the haunted expression in his eyes. After a quick clean, he dressed in a black t-shirt and black jeans and headed back into the bedroom.

He situated himself on the bed and picked up the gem. Holding it in his hands for just a moment, Crowley finally leaned forward and handed it to John.

"Here. This belongs to you."

Comments

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John took the bottle, not bothering to disguise his gratitude, and wasted no time in washing the unpleasant taste from his mouth. The burn of the whiskey knocked down his stomach upset somewhat, and by the time Crowley came out of the bathroom (safely hidden away behind his sunglasses again, and despite knowing it was a wholly ridiculous and impractical thought, John took a moment to wish he'd just ditch the damn things once and for all; it was so much easier to talk with Crowley when he could see his eyes) he felt reasonably capable of dealing with whatever the demon had brought him here to say. Or if not, before long he'd be feeling no pain anyway...

To be handed a piece of jewelry was not at all what he'd expected, though. He blinked at the glowing bauble, frowning. It was beautiful, and obviously bore some sort of enchantment; but though there was a vague familiarity about it, he couldn't recall that he'd ever owned such a thing, let alone left it where Crowley would find it. "What's this?" he asked, the questions sounding rather stupid in his own ears. Brilliant, now my memory's going on top of everything else.

He accepted the thing, carefully--it looked fragile--and knew instantly without quite knowing how that Crowley was correct; this did belong to him. In fact, he had to clamp down on a powerful, entirely irrational desire to hide it away and demand to know where Crowley had got it.

Instead, his badly unsettled mind still lagging behind other faculties that had already recognized the thing, he closed his hand around it gently but securely, and looked to the demon for an explanation.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley stared at John. It had never occurred to him that the man wouldn't recognize the gem for what it was.

"That's the claim to your soul, you idiot. Well, the third of it that belonged to Belial."

He leaned forward on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees and peering at John over the tops of his glasses.

"And if you ever trade it away again, I will personally guarantee that you will have far worse things to worry about than an eternity in Hell..."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John felt every last drop of blood drain out of his face, and for one disoriented instant he thought he was going to faint again. "My...this is what he traded...?"

Suddenly boiling over with too many wildly conflicting emotions to contain, he jumped up and started to pace frenetically, bottle in one hand, eerily glowing gem in the other. "But. How did...? I mean he, they wouldn't just..." He had never told Crowley about that particular caper, Belial certainly wouldn't have brought up such an embarrassing incident in casual conversation, and he couldn't believe Crowley would just mention in passing to a Crown of Satan that he happened to have access to a spell that granted free will.

It wasn't that small mystery that really dislocated his brain, though. It was that Crowley had just handed the thing over, calling it John's as though he wanted nothing in return. He had engineered this whole situation so that...what? John and Belial walked away with the things they wanted most in Creation, and Crowley got a 'Thanks mate, here's hoping your boss doesn't come down on you too hard for taking away his favorite toy?'

His vision blurred, and he turned away hastily so Crowley wouldn't see. "How'd you find out?" he asked hoarsely, completely incapable of putting into words what he really wanted to say. He wasn't certain the right words even existed. Thank you fell so far short of adequate it seemed almost an insult.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

For the first time since they'd known each other, a genuine smile crossed the demon's face. John would have seen it had he been looking at Crowley at the time, but it was weak and fleeting and he missed it completely.

"You were so certain that you were going to Hell, so I figured you had to have done a deal... I just put two and two together, really. Someone in the records department owed me a favour and I had him look at your file. Seemed easy after that, except for that last bit, of course."

Exhausted, Crowley lay on back on his bed and watched John pace. He was glad for his friend, and for Belial, and he just hoped that this little stunt wasn't going to come back to haunt him.

"It was a clever bit of trickery, I'll give you that, but why all three? And..." what the bleeding buggering fuck were you thinking? "...why didn't you tell me?"

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John stopped his agitated pacing with an effort and stared at the gem, rubbing his forehead. He swallowed, remembering unwillingly the crazy, desperate logic that had been driving him there at the end, or what had almost been the end. "It had to be all three. It's...complicated, but in a nutshell, my lungs were disintegrating, I knew I was headed Downstairs, and I needed to make it such a pain in the arse to collect me when the time came that nobody would be in any hurry to see it happen."

He glanced at Crowley, unable to keep the bitterness quite out of his voice, though it was in no way directed at his friend. "I actually knew before I cut the deal where I was slated to go, see. Had it on good authority that Heaven wanted nothing to do with me.

"Anyway, I didn't say anything to you because I'd already asked Ellie. I'd known her longer, and she owed me for keeping Hell off her back the first time. She said it was too much to ask, with Lucifer breathing down my neck." And she was right. "Any demon who tried to help me out was as good as signing their own death warrant. Almost asked you anyway, but I figured you'd just tell me the same thing."

He shook his head, choosing not to complete the confession: that he'd already known about Aziraphale at that point, and had considered forcing the issue using that information as leverage. But even back then I wasn't quite that much of a rat bastard. Not quite.

And now you could be as good as dead anyway, because you tried to help me out and I didn't know enough to warn you what could happen. One-third of my soul's not going to save me. It may just be enough to nail your coffin shut. Oh mate, I am so sorry.

"You seemed kind of preoccupied at the time, anyway," he added somewhat pointlessly.*

---

*For the reader's reference, this took place at roughly the time the Apocalypse was gearing up.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Nobody knows anything for certain until the end," said Crowley cryptically. "I don't care who your authority was. Unless you heard it directly from Him, don't believe it."

He rolled onto his side and rested his head on his hand. It figured that some fucking angel had told John that he wouldn't be allowed into Heaven, making him desperate enough to turn to Lucifer for help extending his mortal life. After the conversation he'd overheard on Halloween, Crowley suspected he knew who it was, but now that he knew Gabriel better, he suspected there was more to the story. Still it made him angry, which was good. He knew anger. Could deal with anger. It was better than despair at any rate. Or terror. Both of which he'd felt quite recently and could formulate no defenses for.

"And honestly, if you'd told me before Adam's birthday, I would have told you not to bother getting healed, but afterwards, well, who knows."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John looked at Crowley--cocky little baby-faced Crowley, who had a monster inside him and could still pull off such a breathtaking act of humanity; a Fallen angel who had just advised him, essentially, to have more faith--and was humbled. In that instant his world rearranged itself just slightly, his peculiar demon friend quietly shifting from the eclectic group of individuals labeled Us to a much smaller, more select group--those few who John not only tried to keep out of harm's way, but would give practically anything to do so.

A half-formed thought he'd been harboring for some time crystallized fully in his mind at the same time, and he voiced it aloud before his worse-if-wiser self had a chance to chew it to bits.

"You're a better man than I am, Crowley," he said softly, and saluted him gravely with the bottle before taking a long pull.

Let Crowley take it as a joke or even an insult, if that made it easier to swallow. He meant every damn word.

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Oh, sit down before you fall down," said Crowley, indicating the expanse of bed next to him. "You're making me dizzy."

He flopped back onto his back, embarrassed at the attention paid to his 'good deed' and trying to find a plausible explanation for why he did it other than 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

"And pass that whiskey over, will you. After today, I really need a drink."

Staring at the cuts on his hand, Crowley willed them to heal as he reached for the bottle. They did. Mostly.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John paused momentarily, watching as the inflamed lacerations on Crowley's hand magically sealed themselves up and faded. Mostly. "Looks a bit nasty," he noted, nodding toward the injury before he handed over the bottle. "Might want to put something on it if it doesn't want to heal up." Even if it were perfectly innocuous (which, as a general rule, such things weren't, but John had no intention of asking) it was likely to make people speculate. And there was more than enough of that going on already.

He seated himself on the edge of the bed a comfortable distance from Crowley, and started to reach for his cigarettes, only to remember that they were once again in his trench--which he'd left hanging in the surgery. "Well, dammit. Gotta stop doing that," he sighed. "Or quit smoking, one of the two...so, congratulations, you've accomplished the nigh-impossible. What are you gonna do now?"

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Can't," said Crowley shortly, looking at his hand before turning it to drink deeply. When he finally lowered the bottle, he had to stifle a smirk as he noticed where John had sat. What'd the man think he was going to do, jump him just because he was on his bed? He'd clearly been hanging around with Belial too long.

"I'm going to Disneyland. What the fuck do you think I'm going to do now? If Lucifer looked around at all during that debacle, then he saw me there. If he did see me then I'm just going to have to lie my arse off until Raphael Falls and then take the credit for that. Should get me off the hook for quite a few little stunts."

Crowley turned his head to look at John, eyes flashing angrily behind his sunglasses.

"And if I survive all of that? Then... then I'm going after Beelzebub."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

In point of fact, John was keeping his distance in part because he had indeed been hanging around with Belial too long (http://community.livejournal.com/neutral_omens/39961.html#cutid1), in part because he didn't want to lend even a whisper of credence to Ellie's speculations, (http://community.livejournal.com/neutral_omens/41999.html#cutid1) and in part because there was always the chance Aziraphale might come wandering in, and the angel had initially taken it the wrong way that John even knew Crowley. (http://community.livejournal.com/neutral_omens/16347.html#cutid1)

Mostly, though, he'd been too recently reminded of what Crowley was capable of becoming to be terribly comfortable in close proximity just yet.

"Raphael? You think he's going down?" he asked, surprised and slightly troubled. He had no love for archangels, but nothing in particular against Raphael either, in spite of his decidedly persnickety personality; at least he appeared to have some genuine concern for humanity. Crowley had never brought up the subject of Falling before, and John had known better than to ask, but it didn't take much imagination to guess it must be a horrific experience.

Still, if it would get Crowley off the hook, then so be it. It wasn't as though anyone was going to drag Raphael down kicking and screaming. If he did Fall, some good might as well come of it.

When Crowley brought up Beelzebub, he wanted to say, Crowley, no. Don't do it. Beelzebub's not like Belial, he's batshit crazy and unbelievably dangerous and you're already in enough trouble on account of me.

The words stuck in his throat, though. It wasn't pure selfishness (or at least, he hoped it wasn't.) It was the simple knowledge that everything Crowley had gone through to retrieve this one soul-piece would be pointless without at least one of the other two pieces. Whoever held the controlling shares, so to speak, ultimately called the shots. And if Belial had been Lucifer's unwilling lapdog, Beelzebub was his chief sycophant; without that three-way dynamic fueled by the hatred between the two lesser demons, John might just as well say he belonged to Lucifer and have done.

Anyway, he knew that if he had just made a statement like that, there wasn't much anyone could have said that would change his mind.

"Well. Little warning next time, huh?" He smiled crookedly. "I'm not sure I'll survive too many more shocks like that."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley smiled lazily at John. Sometimes the man's thoughts could be so easily followed. But as John knew, ownership of one-third of his soul wasn't going to do anyone any good, and Crowley was damned if he had gone through that harrowing experience for nothing.

He returned to the topic at hand. "Yeah, well, I don't know anything for sure. It's just a feeling I've got. You should have heard him yesterday telling me what was love and what wasn't. Uriel wasn't best pleased either..."

Then he blinked. "Warn you? About what? I didn't know that He was going to show up."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John flushed slightly, though he knew the remark wasn't meant as a rebuke. If even Belial hadn't guessed that his ties to Lucifer ran so deep, there was really no way anyone else could have known. Didn't make him feel any better about not forseeing the possibility, though. Or about succumbing to a fucking flashback, of all things. What in blazes had come over him? If he'd let the bad shit get to him that way right along, he wouldn't have lasted a year in this business.

"Not that. This," he muttered, gesturing with the soul-gem. "None of us saw the other thing coming."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley snorted.

"Yeah, that'd be a friendly thing to do." His voice went up half an octave as he imitated himself. "'Hey John. I know you never told me about this, which I'm sure must have been just an oversight because you'd have no reason not to share, but I snooped around in your personal life and found out anyway. So, I'm going to use a gift you gave me and didn't particularly want me to share to try not to kill someone and get part of your soul back, but try not to be too disappointed if I can't, all right?'"

He rolled onto his stomach a foot nearer to John and pushed his nose into the duvet. It was easier than looking at the man's face even with the protection of the sunglasses. Voice muffled, Crowley continued.

"Aziraphale and I figured that it'd be less stressful to give you good news if it happened then to give you bad news that you'd have to live with forever. It's not great news while Beel still has part but it's hope and humans thrive on that crap, so there you go. Put it somewhere safe will you?"

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

...I snooped around in your personal life... John put his face in his hands and let Crowley finish speaking his piece, shaking with silent laughter. Then he nudged the demon with his elbow.

"Yeah, I oughta pop you one for that, right after I go build me a concrete bunker to put the thing in. Nosy bastard. Dunno what's worse, that, or you figuring out the obvious and making me look like a moron." He shook his head. "I know I'm gonna regret this, but would you feel any better if I said I've been watching you pal around with the angel for, oh, about eight years now?"

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley shrugged, which looked odd while his nose was still pressed to the mattress and he turned his head towards John.

"I... don't know how I feel about that. But we were just pals so you can't have seen much. Still dangerous, of course, but I'm still here so you clearly didn't do anything about it."

He eyed John from his low vantage point.

"Ever think about it?"

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John snorted. "Course I thought about it. You think they call me the King of All Bastards because I spit on the pavement? Shit, it's not every day you stumble across something with that much blackmail potential. And do you have any idea how much some of my 'colleagues' would have traded for that information?"

He dearly wished he had a cigarette to keep his hands occupied, and crossed his arms on his knees instead so they wouldn't fidget. "I dunno though. I think of London as my town, but it was pretty obvious you'd both been here a helluva lot longer. It would've been like..." he gestured vaguely, "...flying a plane into Big Ben, or blowing up Westminster Abbey or something. Some things just oughtn't to be messed with." He smiled suddenly. "Anyway, your little gentlemens' agreement was a better dig at all the Powers that Be than anything I could ever come up with. Seemed a shame to bollocks things up for everybody."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Figured," murmured Crowley. "Wouldn't blame you if you had. That's how the game is played after all." He sighed. "You get tired of it after a while..."

Crowley rolled onto his back, put his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling again.

"You know, we never intended for all that to happen. We were just sick of fighting for no reason other than we were told to. But then we had a lot in common. And no one else to talk to who would really understand."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Ah, piss on the game," John sighed. "Nobody ever wins, not really. Might as well be playing hopscotch for all the good it does anyone."

Deliberately, refusing to be put off by his own stupid insecurities, he leaned across Crowley to swipe the bottle back, then scooted to the foot of the bed and stretched out across it. "Yeah, I hear you. I mean, not that I do understand, I suppose, the way you're talking about. But most of the people I've known in the business are gone now."

The whiskey had set him up with a nice warm buzz by this time, and it coincided perfectly with the crash from his earlier adrenaline high. He covered a jaw-cracking yawn. "Can't tell anybody else or I'll wind up back in Ravenscar, or they'll get sucked in and drown." Like Kit almost did. "Any road, far as I'm concerned you two have got more sense on your worst day than the rest of those knuckleheads put together. Fucking lot of shit-for-brains hypocrites. Stop me if I start to repeat myself." He took a swig of whiskey. "On second thought, don't. It bears repeating. Wankers."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley made a faint tired sound that could have been the beginning of a giggle, but clearly wasn't because demons didn't.

"I think you understand pretty well. Much more so than most people. At least you accept the fact of our existence. I've always been surprised that humans seem to live in a state of permanent denial about that. Not that I'm one to speak, I guess, but I'm allowed to be a hypocrite. Comes with the territory."

He grinned.

"And you're right. They are bastards. But now some of them are my bastards."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"True, that. Here's to the ones worth bothering with, then." John raised the whiskey bottle slightly in acknowledgement and yawned again, thinking about Crowley's other observation.

"It's a survival mechanism," he said finally, "the not believing. Once you know it's all real, it's almost impossible to leave it alone, and humans who get mixed up in the supernatural tend to wind up either dead or fucked up beyond hope." He rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Christ, look at my family. We've always been into the shit, it's in our genes or something, and we've paid for it."

He started ticking off points on his fingers, reciting the familiar litany with clinical detachment. "Dad killed my Mum and brother, he's in Hell, Cheryl's a drunk, I am what you see before you and Gemma's well on her way to upholding the tradition. Oh, and my biological daughter is the world's first human plant elemental, wrap your brain around that one." He chuckled. "We're practically poster children for willful ignorance. A normal, sane person who saw the shit we got up to today would do the reasonable thing and either lose their mind or pretend it never happened. I was just born with more stubbornness than sense."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Maybe Crowley was drunk. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he was in shock. Or maybe he was all three, because all he could think of to say to that was, "Daughter?"

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Tefé, she's called. Big mess," John said quietly. "Complicated. She's not really mine...I was just on loan for the occasion. Owed the elemental a favor." He smiled faintly at the memory. Abby Holland had been so furious when he'd reclaimed his body just a little sooner than expected. Then again, Abby had always managed to find a reason to be furious with him. "Doesn't know who she really is, I don't think, or that I exist." He contemplated the ornate ceiling, still bearing subtle traces here and there of the extensive repair work that had been done on the old place. "I hope she doesn't. Ever."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"I should have known it'd be something like that," said Crowley. "No offense, John, but I can't see you with the wife and kids and picket fence."

He leaned over the man to snatch the bottle back, laying very near him without actually touching, not admitting that he found needed comfort in the warm closeness of his friend, and drank down another several mouthfuls.

Gesturing with the bottle, Crowley asked, "So, do you ever wish you didn't know about this kind of shit so you could have that? A life with no demons in it? Where no one's chest has to get torn open so that he can be allowed to fall in love?"

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Used to. Before I figured out humans could be just as bad." John shut his eyes, drowsy and no longer put off by his friend's proximity; Crowley was still just Crowley, after all. "A life without demons, huh? What a concept. Sounds bloody boring."

[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, tell me about it," yawned Crowley, closing his eyes. "Demons: Making Life More Interesting For Six Thousand Fucking Long Years." With that, he drifted to sleep.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

Fuzzily aware that Crowley had nodded off, John realized he was about to do the same and he should really get his arse up and vacate the premises. His limbs didn't want to cooperate, though; the mattress was comfortable, and so was Crowley's warm presence next to him. The solitude of his own room promised very little in the way of rest, and he suspected it was no accident that Crowley had wound up curled so close to him before he'd gone to sleep, either. (Close, but not quite touching. The demon knew him pretty well, all right.)

The hand that held his soul-gem was resting on his chest, and he fingered the bauble absently. Its smooth surface had warmed in his grasp, and it had that soothingly familiar feel of a precious thing long since given up for lost and then unexpectedly found again.

Not found, though. Returned. And at no small cost. Half-formed nightmare images of friends lost to his own pride or fear or stupidity flitted across John's fading consciousness, driven back by a muttered curse and a wordless vow that it would be different this time--that Hell wasn't going to take this one no matter what claim they thought they had.

He fell asleep with his arm draped protectively around Crowley's shoulders, only distantly aware of the fact. Fuck how it looked, anyway. Sometimes it just wasn't worth worrying what anybody else thought.