(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]

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."