Secret Satan Fic Exchange - For Antrazi
Title: Peter Principle
Author:verucasalt123
Artist: patriciatepes
Pairing: None
Characters: Crowley, his dog, Meg, Ruby
W/C: ~1300
Rating: R for curse words and references to torture
Summary: Maybe being promoted to King of Hell wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
A/N: written for antrazi for the holiday exchange at spn_bigpretzel. Hope you like it!!!
He’d been so thrilled with the promotion. Not that being King of the Crossroads was something to sneeze at, by any stretch. Other demons had been covetous of that position for centuries, and for good reason. It was a pretty damn nice title, and there were many perks involved. But now… King of Hell? Crowley was certain this was going to be glorious beyond his wildest imagination.
And yeah, it was, in fact, beyond every imagination he’d ever had. It was the worst damn nightmare he’d even been able to give to other people, let alone the ones he’d had himself.
What a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy was involved in this job! After just a little while, he was almost tempted to transfer himself back to making deals with poor suckers at crossroads, the simple acts of an offer, an acceptance and a kiss. In the past, he’d thought it was a huge responsibility, but now…Jesus (if you remember me) take the wheel. There were an endless parade of contracts to review, demons to oversee, assignments to be handed out…it was really not any fun at all.
He had his pet to keep him company, and he was grateful for it. He’d take his faithful hellhound over any of these lower demons any day of the week. So much infighting. Gossip. Complaints from those who should never have the gall to question him.
Crowley never thought he’d see the day when he’d get bored of burning a useless demon to ash with just a thought. But he’d done it so many times now that it was almost routine. He got tired of them so quickly, and his temper wasn’t easy to keep in check these days.
There was a distinction there, absolutely. Though most demons were pesky and easy to dispatch, some had their advantages. Luckily, he could easily see the difference between the two. He knew instinctively who to keep close and who to keep even closer.
So there he was, reminiscing about his glory days out in the field and feeling confined by his current desk duty, trying to artfully craft a memo to remind his employees about the rules regarding fraternization (which, by the way, were that they could do whatever the fuck they wanted with each other, but if any of them were caught getting cozy with a human soul that had been sent to Hell for, you know, Hell, torture, infinite agony, whatevs, they’d be quickly re-acquainted with methods of torture on the receiving end), when two familiar creatures begged for entrance to his office.
Office? Really? Yes. Office. He had an office with a desk and a comfy chair with lumbar support and one of those cool metal metronome things and a framed photo of himself with his dog, who was clearly the only being on any plane of existence who cared for him even in the slightest.
Resigning himself to the long-suffering sigh belonging solely to the HDIC (sure, he’d picked it up topside, and knew it was considered by some to be offensive in its original context, but he didn’t give a shit. It meant nothing in Hell, because souls had no race or gender), he took in the sight of the two demons in female forms to whom he’d granted an audience.
And why the hell was it that the two of these demons could just never, ever, not fucking ever not have something to bitch about?
They were talking over each other so loudly and hysterically that Crowley had to silence both of them.
“All right, let’s calm down and figure out what’s happening here”, he said, calmed by the four fingers of scotch he’d just swallowed. “Meg, you first.”
“She’s following him, Crowley! I mean, uh, she’s following him around, sir. Sneaking out for little excursions to check on her old boyfriend. She’s in my fucking way, and it’s ridiculous! Not like he gives a crap about her anymore.”
“All right. Come on now, Ruby, what have you got to say?”
She almost looked contrite as she tried to explain. “He’s just so messed up, totally broken and losing his damn mind, I can’t help it. I had to see it for myself, after what he did to me, I wanted to see him suffering. I’m a freaking demon, Cr- um…your majesty (trying to outdo her opponent with flattery, how charming). Sam sent me back here and it’s been pretty nice to watch him lose his useless mind, until this whore started showing up and crowding me.”
Meg piped back up then. “I’m the one who’s supposed to watch Castiel, which means I watch Sam and Dean, too. I’m not the one who made the three of them a freaky cohesive threesome-”
“There is no such thing, Crowley, um, I mean, uh, Lord. No matter what the fanfiction girls get up to in their own minds and post on LiveJournal or Tumblr, they don’t do that.”
“Fucks sake, Ruby, it’s just an expression. Didn’t mean to imply that they’ve all been screwing each other for quite some time now. I didn’t mean threesome like that, jeez!.”
Crowley finally held up his hand and shouted “Enough!”, slamming his glass down onto his desk in frustration. After a deep, calming breath, he spoke in what he hoped was an even but menacing tone. “Meg, you’re doing your job and doing it well. It seems that no harm has come from Ruby’s interloping.”
Ruby was smug just for a moment, until Crowley turned to her. “You, Ruby, have not been given permission to wander the earthly plane, though I understand how compelling it is for you to see how terribly that ignorant moose is suffering. Still, you’ve broken the rules and that’s got to be dealt with. Meg, you spoke to me disrespectfully, after barging in here to be a little tattle-tale, which is also unacceptable.”
Waiting for just long enough to make both of them terribly nervous, he delivered his verdict. “You will both attend today’s staff meeting and take meticulous notes so that I don’t have to sit through it.”
Both demons went wide-eyed. Ruby was the one who spoke first, though. “Please, your majesty, not the staff meeting! I know we were wrong, but it won’t happen again. Right, Meg?” she asked as she looked desperately for assistance from the demon she’d been on the verge of strangling only moments earlier.
“Right, yes, of course, sir, we won’t bother you with this anymore, I swear, but…the staff meeting? Come on, please don’t make us do that”, Meg pleaded.
“No more backtalk. It starts in ten minutes and I expect that you will both pay attention to every single interminably boring word that is spoken and report it all back to me with explicit accuracy. Am I understood?” As he finished, Crowley scratched his hound between the ears and the growling noise that resulted sounded terrifying to the two demons seated in front of him.
His look was enough to have both demons nodding and rushing out of his office, in a frantic search for pads and pens with which to take their perfect and painstakingly accurate notes of this horror that was the monthly staff meeting.
Sighing, Crowley looked down at his pet. “You really are the only one who gets me, Cheney Don’t know what I’d do without you.”
So maybe he’d picked up on Bobby Singer’s pet-naming habits. He’d take any comfort he could get while he was stuck here, and seeing the hellhound wag his giant tail was definitely comforting.
After a moment, though, he had to get back to the memo. Stupid job.