SOME PEOPLE HAVE REAL PROBLEMS--9/10 (Supernatural: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Crowley)
Title: Some People Have Real Problems
Fandom: Supernatural
Word count (total fic): 20,245
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: None, really, maybe some Dean/Cas hints. Don't hold the lack of pairing against it, though--If you're a dog lover, you'll probably like this story...
Summary: When Crowley's meatsuit mutinies it's up to Castiel and the Winchesters to help The King Of Hell him get back into his favourite blood and guts condominium. What starts off as a seemingly easy assignment quickly turns into a drama about a dead dog and a haphazard pile of memories. Putting a leash on Crowley's body proves harder than expected.
Notes: Takes place after season five, AU afterwards--Sam was rescued from Hell in much the same manner as Dean. Otherwise it's canon.
This was written for the crowley_bigbang on livejournal. I didn't quite make it for the official track, so this is the unofficial posting :P.
"This all about the dog, isn't it? It keeps coming back to that, a big circular blip in your programming that can't get fixed. Don't think I don't have the knowledge or power to make you do what I want, I've got an angel out there in that living room who knows damned well how to reboot your system. All remaining little cellular bits of you could be eradicated with a click of his fingers. " He didn't mention, of course, that he himself would likewise be destroyed, and in that bitter irony that was the nature of symbiotic existence, the body inwardly chuckled, having overheard him.
In the living room, Erin had been brought back to consciousness by a curious angel who couldn't leave well enough alone. Crowley could hear Dean's booming voice echo down the hall, while a confused and near weeping Erin tried to both explain and take in the carnage and sudden clean up that had happened in his or her home. "I don't understand!" Erin shouted. "There were bullets flying...He was hit!"
"We figure he came back because he was worried about you." Dean's voice was dark, unforgiving. "Our problem is this--We know you took the money from Gold Tooth out there and we know you and O'Mally were in on it together. A bit of skimming off the top never hurt anyone, right? Except you forgot that drug pushing gang bangers and crooked cops don't like sharing."
"It was O'Mally's idea from the start," Erin protested.
"It was greed that did this," Castiel said, and Crowley raised a brow at the smiting judgement in his tone. Erin was about to go the way of snapped fingers in angelic retribution. "Basic, ridiculous, human greed."
"No!" Crowley could feel the energy building within the angel, the body tense in miserable expectation, the very molecules of the air charged with celestial might. He would have to get out of here and quick if he didn't want to end up a pile of inert cinders himself.
"It wasn't about the money!"
Erin's weeping crept along the thin hallway, echoing into the sparse bedroom, the sorrow wrapping around the two photographs of what was once an unusual but happy family.
"It was for Galileo--for the dog!"
Erin's choked sobs were matched by the sudden rush of misery that burst within Crowley's body and the demon fought to keep from weeping himself. Bugger this, where the hell did all this sad longing come from all of a sudden?
"Stop it," Crowley said to the body, his stomach in knots, his heart burning with a pain it had never felt, not even when alive. "Stop."
"We've had Galileo since he was about a year old. I was on the beat downtown and there was a report of a dog stealing a roast out of the back door of a butcher's shop. I found him in the back alley, munching away on a ham bone. He was a real mess, all matted fur and dirt, but he was a pretty friendly dog, didn't growl or anything when I took the bone away. O'Mally, my partner, he wanted to dump him to the pound or just plain shoot him and get it over with, a real waste of time being on a damned nuisance dog call. I told him I'd run him to the pound, O'Mally could meet me at the station later. I never did go there. I brought Galileo home instead."
"So the two of us are here, we lived the lives of amicable room-mates for about five years before Galileo came into the picture and...I don't know how to explain it. He was a smart dog, a really happy, loving ball of fur and he just added something that wasn't there before. I guess we didn't know how empty we were before he showed up. He filled in a space and brought us closer together, as a couple. There was so much love in this house with Galileo here. What can I tell you? It was like Galileo healed something in our hearts that we never knew was broken."
"It's nice that you took in a stray dog, but that doesn't explain why you had to steal money from a drug dealer. " Crowley's body took a nervous glance down the hall and saw Sam standing at the end of it, massive hands on hips. "All you are is a crooked cop."
"Galileo got sick." Erin glanced up at Sam with imploring resignation. "About five months ago, he was diagnosed with kidney failure. The operation was going to cost a small fortune, and there was no way either of us could afford it, not on his meagre publishing salary and my meter maid wages. Poor Galileo was so sick, and he had gone, only flitting in and out of our lives at that point, and he'd been drinking a lot more and then he got invited to that stupid Oscars dinner by mistake. It was a major literary agent they were supposed to have sent the invite to, and he knew it, but he couldn't stand the thought of Galileo suffering and him not making some effort to get some money. He went to that damned party and never came back, not properly back, anyway." Erin wiped away a stray tear with the cuff of a sleeve. "Galileo held all our emotions, about each other, about our lives...Him being sick just made everything seem so pointless."
"So your live in partner was gone and it felt like everything was going to shit," Dean said. Erin nodded but Dean still wasn't totally convinced. "Look, this I understand, your dog is dying and your man is gone, but...I don't get it, first opportunity you get you go and dip into a drug dealer's stash? You risked your whole career, hell, your whole *life* for a dying dog?"
"It was O'Mally's idea. Gold Tooth as you call him had hundreds of thousands of dollars on him when we busted him and all I needed was ten thousand and Galileo was going to get his operation and his little doggie kidney transplant and it was all going to work out fine. What does a guy like Gold Tooth care about a few thousand dollars? It was nothing to him to lose what he had." Erin was bitter, the sorrow too deep to even cry about it any more. "Look around you. It's not like I have much or that I want for much. We lived sparse lives here because it made us comfortable. Going beyond that made him nervous and me edgy. When I tell you Galileo was worth the risk, you can times that by a million and you still won't get how much that dog meant to us."
Right. Conference time.
Crowley and the body stepped back through the bedroom and into the bathing room where the tall mirror gave Crowley plenty of room to manoeuvre. "Here's the deal," Crowley said, hands held open in a giving gesture. "You win."
The body twitched, unsure of Crowley's promise.
"I admit it, I've been a tad unfair and I'm not proud of the fact I misjudged you. I had thought you were here because of that weeping mass of androgynous pus sitting out there. But it seems you had more in mind than your platonic lover's safety. You were thinking about Galileo, about the dog. I get it, I really do. You missed your dog. Perhaps you thought, in your simple cellular processing, that if you came back here you could ignite some conflict and maybe, just maybe, between the forces of Heaven and Hell, we could find it in our ability to bring your darling Galileo back to life in much the same way you were sort of brought back."
A surge of emotion coursed through the body and Crowley fought the urge to cross its arms and give it a hug. "The thing is, while we're able to manipulate and torture the living life out of the average human being, other species don't fall into that equation. It is my understanding that all dogs go to Heaven and not even an archangel has the power to stop that from happening. I'm afraid the canine hereafter is way out of our jurisdiction."
"I'm not the bad guy here!" Erin shouted from the living room. "I just wanted to help my dog!"
"It's very disappointing how all of this turned out," Crowley agreed, the body nodding in sorrow. "But two worthwhile things have come about due to this, you did get your revenge on the man who had your dog drowned and you have brought to my attention some serious security breaches concerning the use of your meatsuit. You're locked in place now, no way are you getting back to this address again, though I doubt very much you are keen to, now that it is a place of such loss for you. You do, however, have one very important feather in your cap. You have become quite attached to my dog due to my own attachment to Growley."
Crowley held up his hand when the body tried to protest, halting its newest argument and giving it pause. "At first I thought you wanted Growley to come here for use as protection, but I get the deeper meaning now. You wanted to replace Galileo with him and keep your happy family intact. I'm sorry to inform you that this is never going to be possible. You're mostly dead and I'm the one living in your meatsuit."
"I can hear him." Erin's voice had a note of panic in it. "Who the hell is he talking to?"
"I'll make this quick." Crowley rolled up his sleeve, showing off a play bite Growley had given him when he'd wrestled with him over a human femur a week ago. "Growley is *my* dog, but there is nothing that states he can't be yours as well. We can live in harmony, in exactly the same way you were before, with a pleasant pooch in between us. You, myself, Growley. Quite a good team. And this time, there are no worries about corrupt jealous metrosexuals or impending mortality. Growley is here for the millennial haul, as am I and as, subsequently, are you." He gave the body a warm smile. "So? Are we agreed, then? Do we have a deal?"
The body shrugged, unsure.
"That we work together," Crowley clarified. "As a symbiotic family."
The body narrowed its large, wilful gaze on its reflection.
Agreed.
Fandom: Supernatural
Word count (total fic): 20,245
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: None, really, maybe some Dean/Cas hints. Don't hold the lack of pairing against it, though--If you're a dog lover, you'll probably like this story...
Summary: When Crowley's meatsuit mutinies it's up to Castiel and the Winchesters to help The King Of Hell him get back into his favourite blood and guts condominium. What starts off as a seemingly easy assignment quickly turns into a drama about a dead dog and a haphazard pile of memories. Putting a leash on Crowley's body proves harder than expected.
Notes: Takes place after season five, AU afterwards--Sam was rescued from Hell in much the same manner as Dean. Otherwise it's canon.
This was written for the crowley_bigbang on livejournal. I didn't quite make it for the official track, so this is the unofficial posting :P.
"This all about the dog, isn't it? It keeps coming back to that, a big circular blip in your programming that can't get fixed. Don't think I don't have the knowledge or power to make you do what I want, I've got an angel out there in that living room who knows damned well how to reboot your system. All remaining little cellular bits of you could be eradicated with a click of his fingers. " He didn't mention, of course, that he himself would likewise be destroyed, and in that bitter irony that was the nature of symbiotic existence, the body inwardly chuckled, having overheard him.
In the living room, Erin had been brought back to consciousness by a curious angel who couldn't leave well enough alone. Crowley could hear Dean's booming voice echo down the hall, while a confused and near weeping Erin tried to both explain and take in the carnage and sudden clean up that had happened in his or her home. "I don't understand!" Erin shouted. "There were bullets flying...He was hit!"
"We figure he came back because he was worried about you." Dean's voice was dark, unforgiving. "Our problem is this--We know you took the money from Gold Tooth out there and we know you and O'Mally were in on it together. A bit of skimming off the top never hurt anyone, right? Except you forgot that drug pushing gang bangers and crooked cops don't like sharing."
"It was O'Mally's idea from the start," Erin protested.
"It was greed that did this," Castiel said, and Crowley raised a brow at the smiting judgement in his tone. Erin was about to go the way of snapped fingers in angelic retribution. "Basic, ridiculous, human greed."
"No!" Crowley could feel the energy building within the angel, the body tense in miserable expectation, the very molecules of the air charged with celestial might. He would have to get out of here and quick if he didn't want to end up a pile of inert cinders himself.
"It wasn't about the money!"
Erin's weeping crept along the thin hallway, echoing into the sparse bedroom, the sorrow wrapping around the two photographs of what was once an unusual but happy family.
"It was for Galileo--for the dog!"
Erin's choked sobs were matched by the sudden rush of misery that burst within Crowley's body and the demon fought to keep from weeping himself. Bugger this, where the hell did all this sad longing come from all of a sudden?
"Stop it," Crowley said to the body, his stomach in knots, his heart burning with a pain it had never felt, not even when alive. "Stop."
"We've had Galileo since he was about a year old. I was on the beat downtown and there was a report of a dog stealing a roast out of the back door of a butcher's shop. I found him in the back alley, munching away on a ham bone. He was a real mess, all matted fur and dirt, but he was a pretty friendly dog, didn't growl or anything when I took the bone away. O'Mally, my partner, he wanted to dump him to the pound or just plain shoot him and get it over with, a real waste of time being on a damned nuisance dog call. I told him I'd run him to the pound, O'Mally could meet me at the station later. I never did go there. I brought Galileo home instead."
"So the two of us are here, we lived the lives of amicable room-mates for about five years before Galileo came into the picture and...I don't know how to explain it. He was a smart dog, a really happy, loving ball of fur and he just added something that wasn't there before. I guess we didn't know how empty we were before he showed up. He filled in a space and brought us closer together, as a couple. There was so much love in this house with Galileo here. What can I tell you? It was like Galileo healed something in our hearts that we never knew was broken."
"It's nice that you took in a stray dog, but that doesn't explain why you had to steal money from a drug dealer. " Crowley's body took a nervous glance down the hall and saw Sam standing at the end of it, massive hands on hips. "All you are is a crooked cop."
"Galileo got sick." Erin glanced up at Sam with imploring resignation. "About five months ago, he was diagnosed with kidney failure. The operation was going to cost a small fortune, and there was no way either of us could afford it, not on his meagre publishing salary and my meter maid wages. Poor Galileo was so sick, and he had gone, only flitting in and out of our lives at that point, and he'd been drinking a lot more and then he got invited to that stupid Oscars dinner by mistake. It was a major literary agent they were supposed to have sent the invite to, and he knew it, but he couldn't stand the thought of Galileo suffering and him not making some effort to get some money. He went to that damned party and never came back, not properly back, anyway." Erin wiped away a stray tear with the cuff of a sleeve. "Galileo held all our emotions, about each other, about our lives...Him being sick just made everything seem so pointless."
"So your live in partner was gone and it felt like everything was going to shit," Dean said. Erin nodded but Dean still wasn't totally convinced. "Look, this I understand, your dog is dying and your man is gone, but...I don't get it, first opportunity you get you go and dip into a drug dealer's stash? You risked your whole career, hell, your whole *life* for a dying dog?"
"It was O'Mally's idea. Gold Tooth as you call him had hundreds of thousands of dollars on him when we busted him and all I needed was ten thousand and Galileo was going to get his operation and his little doggie kidney transplant and it was all going to work out fine. What does a guy like Gold Tooth care about a few thousand dollars? It was nothing to him to lose what he had." Erin was bitter, the sorrow too deep to even cry about it any more. "Look around you. It's not like I have much or that I want for much. We lived sparse lives here because it made us comfortable. Going beyond that made him nervous and me edgy. When I tell you Galileo was worth the risk, you can times that by a million and you still won't get how much that dog meant to us."
Right. Conference time.
Crowley and the body stepped back through the bedroom and into the bathing room where the tall mirror gave Crowley plenty of room to manoeuvre. "Here's the deal," Crowley said, hands held open in a giving gesture. "You win."
The body twitched, unsure of Crowley's promise.
"I admit it, I've been a tad unfair and I'm not proud of the fact I misjudged you. I had thought you were here because of that weeping mass of androgynous pus sitting out there. But it seems you had more in mind than your platonic lover's safety. You were thinking about Galileo, about the dog. I get it, I really do. You missed your dog. Perhaps you thought, in your simple cellular processing, that if you came back here you could ignite some conflict and maybe, just maybe, between the forces of Heaven and Hell, we could find it in our ability to bring your darling Galileo back to life in much the same way you were sort of brought back."
A surge of emotion coursed through the body and Crowley fought the urge to cross its arms and give it a hug. "The thing is, while we're able to manipulate and torture the living life out of the average human being, other species don't fall into that equation. It is my understanding that all dogs go to Heaven and not even an archangel has the power to stop that from happening. I'm afraid the canine hereafter is way out of our jurisdiction."
"I'm not the bad guy here!" Erin shouted from the living room. "I just wanted to help my dog!"
"It's very disappointing how all of this turned out," Crowley agreed, the body nodding in sorrow. "But two worthwhile things have come about due to this, you did get your revenge on the man who had your dog drowned and you have brought to my attention some serious security breaches concerning the use of your meatsuit. You're locked in place now, no way are you getting back to this address again, though I doubt very much you are keen to, now that it is a place of such loss for you. You do, however, have one very important feather in your cap. You have become quite attached to my dog due to my own attachment to Growley."
Crowley held up his hand when the body tried to protest, halting its newest argument and giving it pause. "At first I thought you wanted Growley to come here for use as protection, but I get the deeper meaning now. You wanted to replace Galileo with him and keep your happy family intact. I'm sorry to inform you that this is never going to be possible. You're mostly dead and I'm the one living in your meatsuit."
"I can hear him." Erin's voice had a note of panic in it. "Who the hell is he talking to?"
"I'll make this quick." Crowley rolled up his sleeve, showing off a play bite Growley had given him when he'd wrestled with him over a human femur a week ago. "Growley is *my* dog, but there is nothing that states he can't be yours as well. We can live in harmony, in exactly the same way you were before, with a pleasant pooch in between us. You, myself, Growley. Quite a good team. And this time, there are no worries about corrupt jealous metrosexuals or impending mortality. Growley is here for the millennial haul, as am I and as, subsequently, are you." He gave the body a warm smile. "So? Are we agreed, then? Do we have a deal?"
The body shrugged, unsure.
"That we work together," Crowley clarified. "As a symbiotic family."
The body narrowed its large, wilful gaze on its reflection.
Agreed.