(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

[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."