Fic: I Need No Sympathy
Title: I Need No Sympathy
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Crowley, brief implied Dean/Lisa
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: 5x22
Word Count: 6,200
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: Dean knows there are no happily ever afters for people like him.
AN: Written for morganoconner 's birthday. I was trying something a little bit different, I hope you like it.
Lisa doesn't push, she doesn't expect anything. She lets Dean slip into her world where he doesn't - shouldn't fit. Lets him slip into Ben's too.
He sleeps in the spare room.
Mostly.
It's strange and it's real and it's hard. Christ, it's so much harder than he thought it would be. Being normal, having a life. He has all the wrong skills, all the wrong instincts. There are a hundred conversations that don't start 'how do we kill it,' leaving him floundering, like he's in one long exam that he hasn't studied for. More than once he wakes up absolutely certain he's in some sort of parallel universe, some fever dream, some cursed reality that's all smoke and mirrors. Certain that he has to find Sam and get out - until he remembers. He remembers that this is real life now.
Dean lasts three months.
It's like pressure building behind his eyes. Messy spikes of adrenaline that leave his heart pounding for no reason. That leave him sidling away from windows and checking the salt supply every time he goes through the kitchen. He's watching everyone, testing anyone that even twitches suspiciously, with holy water. Angling the mirrors just right, leaving devil's traps marked out where the carpets hide them. Just in case.
But he's trying. Honest to God he's trying so hard his teeth hurt. Because he promised Sam - and because Dean's a stubborn son of a bitch who doesn't give up because something's hard.
Then, one Saturday afternoon, he's on his knees over the decapitated body of a vampire that had decided to try and eat one of the neighbours. Its hair is fanned out on the sticky-red floor of the basement, mouth still twisted half-way through a hissing snarl.
It's like slipping back into his old skin. There's blood running down his face, spattered up his arms and chest. He's sawed all the way through the damn thing's neck, fingers gripping the handle of the knife so hard his entire hand's gone numb. Dean's heart's beating like it's going to tear its way out of chest. But, strangely, he feels perfectly and completely calm for the first time since - since the world didn't end.
Instincts were supposed to go rusty when you didn't use them. But he feels bright and sharp. He feels like he's uncoiled. He feels like he can breathe again. The taste of blood and death in his mouth and the slow cooling warmth of something non-human under his hands.
He feels like this is what he should be doing.
Like this is what he's for.
~~~~~
Dean can't stay. If nothing else, the thought that he's always little more than an inch away from decapitating something scares the crap out of him. He's not sure how to explain that to Lisa without sounding like a goddamn psychopath.
Until she tells him he's been getting ready to leave for days. Quietly packing up his things in every moment of calm. Dean hadn't even noticed. Lisa doesn't look surprised. She looks sad and resigned and Dean thinks, for a second, that he could stay. He could make this work, force himself to slow down, to just stop.
Lisa gives him a wry smile like she can see him thinking it. Then she tells him to make sure he calls, she tells him to stay safe. To stay safe out there like she knows how ridiculous that was, even with the both of them.
Thinking about Sam hurts. Not thinking about Sam, trying not to think about Sam, hurts even more. But pain is real, so he lets his brother rest somewhere behind his eyes. A solid presence. If nothing else, he thinks they can both go out fighting.
~~~~~
It's easy enough for Dean to find something to kill.
He sticks to leafing through the papers. Sam's laptop is still tumbled down in the back, bag strap caught under the seat. But Dean leaves it there. He can't bring himself to drag it out and power it up.
A haunted house just outside of Edgewater gives him an angry ghost to deal with. He ends up with plaster all over the back of his jeans, breathing the smell of burning paraffin and ashes. It's pitch black when he stumbles his way back to the car, water from the grass crawling up both legs of his jeans.
He drives until he finds a motel. The place smells of damp and stale urine and he spends an hour hunched over on the bed feeling like he's going to throw up. Head so full of memories it feel like it's going to split open. It's too early in the morning to go out and find some way to crush the feeling, or numb it at least. He falls asleep to the hum of the air conditioning. There's no time at all between it's low, clicking vibration and the sharp lines of light that creep in around the edges of the curtain.
He's out and on the road before the sun gets high enough do more than pinch pain at the dryness of his eyes.
He heads west. It's as good a direction as any. Though the wind never manages to clear his head all the way. He skips from job to job. Never much caring where or what. He manages to come out of all of them with no broken bones and no wounds that bleed badly enough to leave him woozy. No stitches in places he can't get to. He drowns however many hours of the night are left in whatever cheap booze he can find. More often than not he ends up half sunk in a chair by the window, bottle half-empty. But that's still too empty to get in the car and drive the hell out of whatever town he's in.
The world, at least, almost makes sense like this. Falling from one hunt to the next, a well-worn groove that he knows how to walk in. This is what he does best, even if it's wrong now, even if he has to smother the ache of what's missing in a jumbled mosaic of blood and ashes and burnt bones. Then retreat somewhere and drink away the rest of the night. Because it blotted out hell sometimes, why not this?
Still, he's living up to one of his father's legacies at least. The one that involves a bottle and a dozen sharp-edged regrets.
"You do stay in the best places, don't you?"
Dean tenses but he doesn't move out of the chair. A slow roll of his head sideways tells him what he already knows.
Crowley. Who he hasn't seen since - since everything. He's stood in the faint shaft of darkness between the door and the wall. Dressed for twenty degrees cooler than it actually is. He offers Dean a raised eyebrow, and an expression that perfectly mixes arrogance and disappointment.
Like Dean is less impressive than he remembers.
Dean doesn't give him the satisfaction of a response, though Crowley doesn't seem surprised at the glaring lack of hospitality. He simply gives the motel room one sharply unhappy look and takes two steps. Close enough for Dean to feel the cold coming off his coat. Wherever he'd been ten minute ago it hadn't been anywhere within a hundred miles of here.
Dean doesn't even know what day it is.
"It's Friday," Crowley provides.
Dean doesn’t know how the hell he managed to work out what he was thinking. Hopes to fucking God they don't have mind-reading demons now. Angels were bad enough. He frowns the question at Crowley sideways.
"You look like a man who's cut himself adrift from the small details of everyday life," Crowley explains.
The demon drifts into his space and slides the bottle out of his hand. Dean doesn't even bother trying to hang on to it. Crowley pulls a face at the label like he's embarrassed to be in the same room as Dean's beverage of choice.
"Drowning yourself in sub-standard alcohol would be a particularly disappointing way for you to go out though, don't you think? Found slumped in a chair somewhere in your own filth, flies buzzing round your dubiously flammable corpse."
Dean reaches up far enough to snatch the bottle back.
"Go away," he says fiercely.
Crowley sighs.
"I realise you function better as some sort of crime-fighting team, but your brother is dead."
Dean's fingers clench tight round the bottle, words grating all the way down his spine. He gives one instinctive movement. A brief headshake like he's trying to dispute the truth of it. Maybe just because he knows he's too unsteady to get up and punch him in the face.
"And you, sadly, are barely functioning on your own. You're fast on your way to becoming a tragic footnote in history, now the apocalypse is no longer the main event."
"Why the fuck do you care?"
"Let's just say business is slow, what with all the demonic omens that have had people huddling terrified in their bed these past few months. It's so much harder to get people to hand over their soul when the thought of hell is not so distant and abstract."
Dean grunts like he doesn't give a crap. But he'd be dead if he wasn't curious.
"So, what are you doing here?"
"Perhaps I missed you," Crowley says. With all the affection of a snake about to swallow something whole.
"I find that really unlikely," Dean offers with no enthusiasm at all.
"It was worth a try," Crowley adds. He settles himself in the chair opposite him. "Maybe I owe you for jamming a cog into the apocalypse machine and rendering it unfit for the purpose. Maybe I don't like owing people."
Dean glares at him.
"You wouldn't stay in debt if it bothered you, you'd just kill me."
Crowley makes a soft, surprised noise.
"And here I assumed being drunk would make you even stupider than usual."
"I have my moments," Dean says, stiffly mocking.
Crowley pulls a face that Dean can't quite read, then rolls his eyes.
"Fine, I have my reasons for not wanting you a fly-ridden corpse in some nameless motel room."
"Good luck with that," Dean says. But he doesn't take a drink. Can't quite make himself with the sharp smell of demon in the room. Not that he isn't drunk enough to kill already.
"I thought you'd appreciate the amusing irony at least, in your own blundering sort of way."
Dean glares at him. "Don't expect a round of applause, you'll be sorely disappointed."
"Oh, I'm sure I'll survive."
~~~~~
The next hunt Dean goes on, he has a smart-mouthed demon along for the ride. All heat and mockery in the passenger seat. He still hasn't told Dean what he wants. He's still hard as hell to ignore. But Crowley knows how to kill things. Dean's still working through a frustrated sort of revenge in the only way he knows how.
They end up in some sort of comedy one-upmanshipment that ends in blood.
None of it theirs.
The Impala isn't right, it's not even close to right. But it's not as empty as it was before.
~~~~~
It's not like Sam and Ruby.
It's nothing like them.
Dean's convinced himself as much over too many late nights and too many bottles of whatever the hell was going cheap. He knows not to trust him. He knows - never forgets - what Crowley is, and Crowley certainly makes no fucking apologies for it. He knows Crowley will have a plan, demons like Crowley always have a plan. Not that Crowley is your average demon. More unpredictable, smarter maybe, but just as ruthless. He has a twisted sense of humour and he'll quite happily let Dean get smacked around before he decides to do anything. But shitty, demonic help is better than no help at all.
Dean knows from calling Bobby that the world's still a mess, and there aren't enough people dealing with it. Too many hunters got taken out. Not enough new blood, not enough people who know. For all that they stopped the apocalypse, the world's not exactly full of roses now. Once the smoke clears there's just as many - if not more - demons. It's like they brought the apocalypse to a slamming halt, rather than fixed anything. Stemmed the tide and left the world half flooded.
But then this is what they asked for, wasn't it, more of the same. For tomorrow to be just like yesterday. And at any other time in the past year Dean would have killed for more of the same.
This isn't the same. Because now he's fighting one man down.
The price was too high. The price is always too damn high.
~~~~~
Dean stops drinking.
He stops drinking as much.
It's either that or lose every conversation they ever have. Because he just knows that's probably going to end badly for him eventually.
~~~~~
Dean has no idea why Crowley sticks around. All smirk, self-assurance and tailoring that looks out of place everywhere they go. His disappearing/reappearing act was old a week ago. But he doesn't quit it, no matter how much Dean complains, bitches or threatens. Dean's never quite been able to get his head around the way Crowley barely reacts to having a hunter around. Like Dean hasn't killed a thousand demons in his life. It's like he's never been worried that Dean might be able to kill him. Hell, that might be even more true now. Why be afraid of a messed-up, drunken hunter who drifts from monster to monster like he's just looking for the one that'll tear him open. Though if Dean really does have a death wish he's too fucking good for it to stick. Too determined to kill anything which comes close.
Or Crowley's doing a better job of watching his back than he's making out.
He knows Crowley's got to be here for a reason. The fact that the reason doesn't seem to be to kill him, at least not yet, isn't as reassuring as it should be. Because wanting him dead is easy, anything else - hell - anything else is going to be complicated. And Dean's probably not going to see it coming until it's too late.
Currently the demon's leant back on the ratty motel couch, watching Dean polish his boots like the manual labour is quaint and fascinating. But Dean's slogged through enough wet fields to know that if you don't take care of you boots they'd fuck you over when you least expected it.
He points a finger at Crowley
"No using me as bait again, tonight. I mean it, you quit that or I'm going to make it my mission in life to make you drink holy water."
Crowley folds one leg over the other.
"I use you as bait because it works. Monsters die, everyone goes home happy."
"Except the bait," Dean grumbles.
"Dean, you don't want to be happy. You find happy, strange and uncomfortable and would probably shoot it in the face if it showed up unexpectedly on your doorstep."
"We go in the front," Dean insists. Because Crowley is far too attached to the stealth attack.
"That's your answer to everything isn't it? 'Blunder in blind and hit everything that moves with a big stick." Crowley drags out the words, in a way that says pretty clearly he thinks Dean's incapable of thinking up a better plan.
"It's worked for me so far."
"It worked for you when you had a mountain at your back masquerading as a human being," Crowley says flatly.
There's no bite there, but Dean thinks he's making a point anyway. He grits his teeth and glares at him over the top of the boot he's polishing.
"I'm doing it my way. Because we both know you'll do whatever the fuck you want anyway."
"I do whatever it takes. When you give them the opportunity to fight back you're immediately working with odds. And considering most of the things you go after are demons in human skin, I'm amazed you haven't had all your bones broken for the fun of it yet."
"I do fine - we did fine," Dean says. There's still a grate in his voice. Something that can't - won't talk about Sam.
"I would have thought you'd take advantage of the element of surprise. Since genetics didn't see fit to grace you with an abundance of intelligence."
"This coming from a demon, when the most you can manage up here is something that looks like something a smoker hacked up."
"Are we name-calling now, then? That's really not a smart avenue to venture down. Oh, the insults I've heard, Dean."
Dean rolls his eyes and grunts irritation. Because he knows having a pissing contest with a demon never ends well, and they have more important things to do.
"Don't you have other things to do, people to con out of their souls?"
"Oh, I don't con them. The sales pitch is one hundred percent upfront. That's what makes it so beautiful."
Dean dumps his boots, drags a bottle out of his other bag and spins the lid off.
"If you're not having fun feel free to leave any time," he says stiffly.
"Maybe you're growing on me," Crowley says slowly, then pulls a face as if this isn't in any way a good thing. "Though, on the upside, it's been a while since I've had an excuse to just kill things." Crowley eyes are flat black and that should make Dean want to shove a knife straight through his chest.
Instead he tosses the bottle into Crowley's lap, watches amber liquid slosh over his suit.
Crowley's bitchface has a flavour of long-suffering frustration to it.
But he doesn't give the bottle back.
~~~~~
For all that Crowley knows how to fake civilised, he's not. His mask may be deeper than most, more expensive and packaged up with an accent from half a world away. But it's still just a mask. Dean's seen the flash of his teeth. Seen the way he watches people like they're little more than amusing and occasionally useful parts of the scenery. The way he's not above slicing corners clean off, to get where he needs to be.
But Dean's not going to let that recklessness apply to him.
He takes the bruises and the twinges. He can live with them, he's had them before. And when they hunt vampires in Ripley, Ohio he knows he's warm and inviting as hell.
Crowley proves he's more than strong enough to tear a vampires head clean off, leaving half his face painted and running red. All the fancy pocket handkerchiefs in the world aren't cleaning that off. Put blood all over something and you can tell clear enough what it is.
Dean doesn't miss the way Crowley looks at the woman they're trying to save. Like she has no meaning at all - it makes Dean shove hard at his chest and after a fraction of a second, solid turns to soft. Crowley takes one careful step back.
"We don't kill people," Dean says. Harsh and angry.
"You don't kill people," Crowley corrects. "And to save myself a truly migraine-inducing level of disapproval I'm working around your squeamishness."
Dean spends a long, exhausting month watching his own ass. While Crowley watches him over one expensive decanter of drink after another. Like he's amused by Dean's paranoia. By Dean's frustrated wait for the other shoe to drop.
It takes him another week to realise he's hunting better than he has since the end of the world. It's like he's been honed to a fine edge without even realising it. He feels sharp and clear and clean.
He should fucking hate it.
But he doesn't.
~~~~~
It's been exactly eight months since Sam died. Dean's been counting off the days in a haphazard sort of way. It's a special sort of punishment to force himself to remember. To make himself feel it. Though there's a muted edge to it now that makes the guilt louder than the pain. As if it's a betrayal that there might come a time when he gets used to this. Like that shouldn’t be possible and he's failing in some way by making the journey.
He drowns the guilt and the pain until his brain is an unsteady hum. Too drunk-heavy to pick a fight, too cold to stay out past the sharp chill of midnight. He finds his way back, always finds his way back. He thinks maybe he has a homing beacon in his head that always takes him back to the car.
Crowley's a solid shape, leant against the hood. Dean can recognise him drunk from a hundred feet away, in the dark. He doesn't know whether that's a good thing or not. He has no idea where Crowley goes when he's not with him. The goddamn circus for all he knows.
"Any more and you're going to drown, Winchester."
Dean looks down at the bottle he's holding, an absent judge of volume. He finds it emptier than it has any right to be. But there's enough left - enough to share. Share around the liquid-burn of it. Share the guilt and the pain of it. It seems appropriate, today, in the cold, dark of a shitty motel parking lot with someone who's probably never been human. Dean doesn't care if it's cheap-ass shit that Crowley wouldn’t be seen dead drinking. Drinking alone makes this too damn depressing, makes him some sad washed up drunk who can't deal with his own problems.
He waits for the smirk, for the words, Crowley always has words, some of them long - and Dean understands ninety percent of them, no matter what he fucking thinks - but Dean's not interested. The words turn into noise when he tips the bottle up to Crowley's mouth, but he's too drunk to pour straight. The demon ends up with cheap scotch rolling a line down his chin and throat. A wet, sharp, splash that Dean doesn’t even know why he's so amused by. But he's laughing, laughing all the way in until he's smothering his laughter in the brand new taste of Crowley's mouth.
There's a murmur, a vibration that sounds like a question. There's always too many words. Tonight Dean just wants him to shut up. He just wants Crowley to shut up and stop talking, just for tonight. So Dean pushes his mouth open and makes it so he can't talk at all.
Crowley's impossibly warm under his air-cooled fingers and he tastes like fire. He lets Dean push him, lets him dig his fingers into the expensive coat and shove him back into the room - then up against the door with a sharp weighty 'thud.' The bottle hits the floor, a crack of glass and a slow spill of liquid while Dean's digging a boot between Crowley's shiny, shiny shoes. He tugs at the jacket, at the slick-shine of belt underneath. Until Dean can pour anger all the way through him, all the way into him, and Crowley takes it, takes every single piece of it, and doesn't break.
Dean's the one who wakes up with bruises, sprawled out on a cheap motel bed with a jackhammer in his brain and a looseness in his limbs that he knows far too well.
He thinks he should be disgusted with himself. But it's more of a low level irritation, a heavy, creeping weight of disappointment. Because his life's just a shelf full of bad ideas, all going cheap.
Crowley doesn't say a word about what they did. He still looks at him like he's an idiot, still complains about everything from his choice of music to the weather. He still mocks him for being 'intellectually stunted.'
Dean stares at the world through sunglasses so the light doesn't send him blind, makes Crowley dig through the paper for something resembling a monster.
~~~~~
Crowley doesn't care so much about his clothes when Dean's trying to drag them all apart. Torn stitching is an accusing snap of sound, in-between the hard noises he makes every time their mouths slide apart. The buttons are uncooperative, so much so that Dean half-thinks the world's trying to tell him something. But everything comes free eventually sometimes in pieces.
Crowley laughs into Dean's mouth, low and smug and triumphant in a way that makes Dean want to fucking bite him. But he already knows that doesn't help. Biting just makes him rougher, makes him vicious. And that's far too easy to get lost in.
"Oh please, don't restrain yourself on my account."
"Shut up, shut the fuck up," Dean tells him. Before he's crushing whatever else Crowley has to say back into his mouth. Under the hard bite of teeth that's so finely balanced between anger and greed that he can't tell the difference.
Dean ends up shoved down in the sheets, legs spread around Crowley's solid waist, hips tilted up, body shaking on every quick, hard thrust. And then he's not thinking anything at all. Pushed too far to the crumbling edge of reckless, stupid lust to care any more. Every breath falling out fast and hot.
~~~~~
They spend the end of the year in a hospital full of ghosts. Dean can see his breath in every corridor, wind whistling through the shattered windows. The place is a nest of the dead. There are more than Dean's ever seen in one place, and the basement's full of old bones.
Crowley tells fucking horror stories of enough ghosts collecting together and making some sort of proto-mass that has all the powers of a wraith. Draining all the life from someone with a touch. Dean half thinks he's messing with him. But there's something tight, something wary in Crowley's expression.
It turns out there's no proto-mass of evil. Just a lot of bones to burn, a lot of cold hands ready to slam Dean through the nearest door.
Crowley's more comfortable with things that can bleed. Though he does hand over a spell that makes them all freeze in their tracks like they're caught in amber. Dean's just pissed that he had to collect a shit-ton of bruises before the guy was willing to give up his secrets.
"I like you with bruises," Crowley says.
Dean's honestly not sure whether he wants to punch him in the face for that or not.
~~~~~
It snows, for the whole of December. Like God's trying to obliterate the whole damn world. It disappears inch by inch under a carpet of white. The room's freezing and the car's stuck behind a snow bank the size of an overturned oil tanker.
Crowley could go wherever the hell he wants, but he stays. He stays in Dean's hotel room and complains about the cold and the music on the radio, and the cheap alcohol. He complains about everything until Dean shoves him down, and shuts him up.
The bed barely takes the both of them, Dean ends up straddling Crowley's waist, knees dug half into the sheets and half into pale skin.
They fuck like that. It's rough and messy and uncomfortable, Dean shoving down and back, fingers dug in the muscle of Crowley's upper arms.
He doesn’t let the demon talk this time, doesn't let Crowley have free reign with his sharp tongue and smart-ass insults. The silence is furious and desperate and only half broken with the clipped-out, obscene little noises of greedy pleasure.
Crowley's eyes are completely black, voice a wreck in his throat. Making noises that barely sound human at all. Fingers too hard at Dean's waist and thighs, digging in too tight. Until Dean shakes apart in three, hard shoves. He ends up slumped over, letting each shiver slide all the way through him, making quiet, breathless noises of pain and relief.
Crowley catches a hand in Dean's hair, pulls his head up and kisses him. It's wide open and lazy in a way they just don't. Dean stays there, stays there until the slow slide-press of fingers at the back of his neck leaves edges of guilty anger rolling through him.
~~~~~
They're not doing it any more.
Dean's thought the same thing more times a day than he can count, but this time he means it. There's a difference between making something a habit because you just want something and - hell, expecting it, relying on it.
Needing it.
He won't do that with a demon. He just won't. He knows his own patterns well enough to know when he falls into a groove he has a hard time crawling back out and this can't become a thing. This messy, whatever the hell it is, that leaves them fighting one minute and fucking the next. Bad habits, and he knows well enough that when you sink in too deep you get in a position where things start to look different. And Dean knows he's falling into the same hole as Sam.
That's not what he says though. He just mouths off something that's half bullshit and half insults. He tells Crowley he's had enough. The lazy smirk is tighter, less easy. The sarcasm is sharper. But Crowley doesn't protest. He seems more amused than anything else.
He mocks Dean for his new-found martyrdom and self-control, and his return to the comfortable world of alcohol abuse.
Dean just takes the fucking bottle into the bathroom, and drinks until he can't feel a thing.
A week later, Crowley's digging shards of small teeth out of his back and Dean can still hear the snapping crack of the creature's jaws. Can still half feel the damn things crawling up for his throat, claws shredding his shirt open.
He leaves the bottle of scotch on the floor and fucks Crowley until he stops talking.
~~~~~
It's not supposed to be like this.
Crowley's supposed to be gone by the time Dean wakes up. That's the way it always goes. Instead the bed is an expanse of warm sheets and warmer demon. Heavy over one of Dean's legs, a breath of laughter curling out in the half-light of the room.
Crowley slides a hand under the pillow, gets his fingers round the knife Dean keeps there. Not Sam's knife, it's just bright steel with no markings. Good enough to gut something all the same.
Dean catches his wrist, follows his hand to the chill of the handle and slips it out of his fingers.
"I keep the knife."
A smile slides slowly onto Crowley's face.
"In case I want to what, carve my name into your skin?"
Dean knows better than to give him back the knife, knows so much better. But he doesn't stop Crowley's fingers from sliding round the handle and gripping tight.
"Do you?" Dean asks.
There's a twist of mouth, an edge of a smile. But there's a focus there, an intensity that seems sharper when Crowley's eyes are human.
"Not just my name," Crowley admits. "I'd quite like to slice you with a bunch of old and interesting symbols and put their twins into my skin. There's nothing quite like messy, ancient blood magic."
Dean grunts.
"And I thought you were civilised."
"I'm a civilised demon," Crowley points out. Or reminds him, always reminds him. So Dean never forgets. His focus is on the naked skin of Dean's chest now, like he's thinking about it.
"And what does that get you?" Dean demands.
"Power," Crowley says simply. "And it would make you mine."
Dean reacts to that, instinctively. A grunt of angry refusal in his throat. Because he belongs to no one.
"No one gets to make me do crap I don't want to do."
"I said it makes you mine. I never said it makes you obedient. Not that the idea isn't -" Crowley pauses, hot fingers catching tight in Dean's skin. "-satisfying."
"If you're in charge it's the same damn thing. You're a demon, and don't think I've forgotten that, don't think you don't remind me of that at every opportunity." Dean shifts under him but doesn't try and move away. Doesn't push at him.
"And angels have proven themselves to always have noble intentions," Crowley counters, all loose mockery and edges.
"I wouldn’t let an angel own me either."
Crowley's fingers dig in just below where the burn from Castiel's handprint rests on his arm.
"Is that right?"
"What do you really want?" Dean asks, or maybe demands. The conversation's slipping from his grasp in a way he's getting used to. It's like they're never talking about what they're talking about. As if Crowley's always prodding for answers to questions he's not actually asking.
"Maybe I want to do something for you," Crowley says.
"Bullshit." Dean reacts immediately and instinctively. Crowley laughs like he's genuinely amused - then shrugs, a strangely honest and inelegant gesture.
"Maybe I want to own you. Maybe I want to call you mine. You're a very shiny prize, Dean Winchester."
Dean shakes his head.
"That's not the only reason."
"I need a way into and out of hell," Crowley says simply.
Dean goes very still.
"I can go there on my own, but bringing someone out, that's a different matter. You're an angelic vessel, bright and fierce and furious. There's no better anchor than you. "
Dean can feel the thunder of his own heartbeat. The steady increase of weight where Crowley is carefully pressing him back into the sheets.
"And this magically makes that possible," Dean says, throat bone dry.
"Your paranoia is adorable, you realise that. Dean, I wouldn't need magic to make you do what I want. But I could use it, and I could make you do a lot of things without telling you about it, and you know it."
Dean wants to snap back that he'd like to see him try. Instead he bites his tongue and grunts something which might be reluctant agreement.
"I could have fucked you any time I wanted to," Crowley says. He manages to make it sound nothing like a threat. "Though I doubt you would have enjoyed it as much."
Dean does dig his fingers in then. Which gets him a brief, soft noise which isn't anywhere close to unhappy.
"So what, now I'm broken you think it'll be fun to tie me up with strings and call me your puppet?"
Crowley laughs, quick and hard.
"Dean, you're so far away from broken it's not even funny. For all your many and varied flaws, you are a thing of sharp and terrible fucking beauty -"
Crowley makes a noise, caught in the middle of a sentence like he can't resist, fingers dug in Dean's hair which is too short to take his aggression. But he drags Dean's head up anyway and kisses him. Bites at the soft edge of his mouth just hard enough to make Dean grunt protest.
Dean doesn't pull away until he stops.
"No one gets to control me," he says.
"I won't have control over you. Not like you think. And you're going to say yes," Crowley says. "Because it's Sam."
Dean stays quiet. Swallows whatever words want to come out of his throat.
"Because, no matter what you promised him, when have you ever done as you're told and made the smart choices," Crowley hisses into his ear. "But, I get you either way."
Dean digs his fingers into the too-warm skin of Crowley's back, drags air through his nose and says nothing.
"So, you did it all for you," Dean says quietly, rough and unsurprised.
"Demon," Crowley reminds him, a breath away from his mouth. And Dean makes an unhappy, angry noise, but lets Crowley kiss him.
"Fucking bastard," Dean manages. Though his fingers are still moving, still digging into the warmth of him. The weight of him, which he knows is going to be near impossible to let go of.
"Perhaps it wasn't entirely for me," Crowley says. "You're easy to get used to."
Crowley's slides over and down, crushing him back into the sheets and holding him there. He's heavy and warm and he can never stay away for long, has to pull Dean's jaw down and kiss him again. Dean takes it all, the sharp dig of fingers into his skin and the hard - far too possessive crush of mouth.
Then Crowley lets his mouth free, tips his head back and looks at him.
"I get you, you get Sam. You won't get a better bargain than that Dean."
Dean grunts something that's half agreeable and half lost. Then he spreads his arms out, relaxes, and waits for the first dig of the knife.
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Crowley, brief implied Dean/Lisa
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: 5x22
Word Count: 6,200
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: Dean knows there are no happily ever afters for people like him.
AN: Written for morganoconner 's birthday. I was trying something a little bit different, I hope you like it.
Lisa doesn't push, she doesn't expect anything. She lets Dean slip into her world where he doesn't - shouldn't fit. Lets him slip into Ben's too.
He sleeps in the spare room.
Mostly.
It's strange and it's real and it's hard. Christ, it's so much harder than he thought it would be. Being normal, having a life. He has all the wrong skills, all the wrong instincts. There are a hundred conversations that don't start 'how do we kill it,' leaving him floundering, like he's in one long exam that he hasn't studied for. More than once he wakes up absolutely certain he's in some sort of parallel universe, some fever dream, some cursed reality that's all smoke and mirrors. Certain that he has to find Sam and get out - until he remembers. He remembers that this is real life now.
Dean lasts three months.
It's like pressure building behind his eyes. Messy spikes of adrenaline that leave his heart pounding for no reason. That leave him sidling away from windows and checking the salt supply every time he goes through the kitchen. He's watching everyone, testing anyone that even twitches suspiciously, with holy water. Angling the mirrors just right, leaving devil's traps marked out where the carpets hide them. Just in case.
But he's trying. Honest to God he's trying so hard his teeth hurt. Because he promised Sam - and because Dean's a stubborn son of a bitch who doesn't give up because something's hard.
Then, one Saturday afternoon, he's on his knees over the decapitated body of a vampire that had decided to try and eat one of the neighbours. Its hair is fanned out on the sticky-red floor of the basement, mouth still twisted half-way through a hissing snarl.
It's like slipping back into his old skin. There's blood running down his face, spattered up his arms and chest. He's sawed all the way through the damn thing's neck, fingers gripping the handle of the knife so hard his entire hand's gone numb. Dean's heart's beating like it's going to tear its way out of chest. But, strangely, he feels perfectly and completely calm for the first time since - since the world didn't end.
Instincts were supposed to go rusty when you didn't use them. But he feels bright and sharp. He feels like he's uncoiled. He feels like he can breathe again. The taste of blood and death in his mouth and the slow cooling warmth of something non-human under his hands.
He feels like this is what he should be doing.
Like this is what he's for.
~~~~~
Dean can't stay. If nothing else, the thought that he's always little more than an inch away from decapitating something scares the crap out of him. He's not sure how to explain that to Lisa without sounding like a goddamn psychopath.
Until she tells him he's been getting ready to leave for days. Quietly packing up his things in every moment of calm. Dean hadn't even noticed. Lisa doesn't look surprised. She looks sad and resigned and Dean thinks, for a second, that he could stay. He could make this work, force himself to slow down, to just stop.
Lisa gives him a wry smile like she can see him thinking it. Then she tells him to make sure he calls, she tells him to stay safe. To stay safe out there like she knows how ridiculous that was, even with the both of them.
Thinking about Sam hurts. Not thinking about Sam, trying not to think about Sam, hurts even more. But pain is real, so he lets his brother rest somewhere behind his eyes. A solid presence. If nothing else, he thinks they can both go out fighting.
~~~~~
It's easy enough for Dean to find something to kill.
He sticks to leafing through the papers. Sam's laptop is still tumbled down in the back, bag strap caught under the seat. But Dean leaves it there. He can't bring himself to drag it out and power it up.
A haunted house just outside of Edgewater gives him an angry ghost to deal with. He ends up with plaster all over the back of his jeans, breathing the smell of burning paraffin and ashes. It's pitch black when he stumbles his way back to the car, water from the grass crawling up both legs of his jeans.
He drives until he finds a motel. The place smells of damp and stale urine and he spends an hour hunched over on the bed feeling like he's going to throw up. Head so full of memories it feel like it's going to split open. It's too early in the morning to go out and find some way to crush the feeling, or numb it at least. He falls asleep to the hum of the air conditioning. There's no time at all between it's low, clicking vibration and the sharp lines of light that creep in around the edges of the curtain.
He's out and on the road before the sun gets high enough do more than pinch pain at the dryness of his eyes.
He heads west. It's as good a direction as any. Though the wind never manages to clear his head all the way. He skips from job to job. Never much caring where or what. He manages to come out of all of them with no broken bones and no wounds that bleed badly enough to leave him woozy. No stitches in places he can't get to. He drowns however many hours of the night are left in whatever cheap booze he can find. More often than not he ends up half sunk in a chair by the window, bottle half-empty. But that's still too empty to get in the car and drive the hell out of whatever town he's in.
The world, at least, almost makes sense like this. Falling from one hunt to the next, a well-worn groove that he knows how to walk in. This is what he does best, even if it's wrong now, even if he has to smother the ache of what's missing in a jumbled mosaic of blood and ashes and burnt bones. Then retreat somewhere and drink away the rest of the night. Because it blotted out hell sometimes, why not this?
Still, he's living up to one of his father's legacies at least. The one that involves a bottle and a dozen sharp-edged regrets.
"You do stay in the best places, don't you?"
Dean tenses but he doesn't move out of the chair. A slow roll of his head sideways tells him what he already knows.
Crowley. Who he hasn't seen since - since everything. He's stood in the faint shaft of darkness between the door and the wall. Dressed for twenty degrees cooler than it actually is. He offers Dean a raised eyebrow, and an expression that perfectly mixes arrogance and disappointment.
Like Dean is less impressive than he remembers.
Dean doesn't give him the satisfaction of a response, though Crowley doesn't seem surprised at the glaring lack of hospitality. He simply gives the motel room one sharply unhappy look and takes two steps. Close enough for Dean to feel the cold coming off his coat. Wherever he'd been ten minute ago it hadn't been anywhere within a hundred miles of here.
Dean doesn't even know what day it is.
"It's Friday," Crowley provides.
Dean doesn’t know how the hell he managed to work out what he was thinking. Hopes to fucking God they don't have mind-reading demons now. Angels were bad enough. He frowns the question at Crowley sideways.
"You look like a man who's cut himself adrift from the small details of everyday life," Crowley explains.
The demon drifts into his space and slides the bottle out of his hand. Dean doesn't even bother trying to hang on to it. Crowley pulls a face at the label like he's embarrassed to be in the same room as Dean's beverage of choice.
"Drowning yourself in sub-standard alcohol would be a particularly disappointing way for you to go out though, don't you think? Found slumped in a chair somewhere in your own filth, flies buzzing round your dubiously flammable corpse."
Dean reaches up far enough to snatch the bottle back.
"Go away," he says fiercely.
Crowley sighs.
"I realise you function better as some sort of crime-fighting team, but your brother is dead."
Dean's fingers clench tight round the bottle, words grating all the way down his spine. He gives one instinctive movement. A brief headshake like he's trying to dispute the truth of it. Maybe just because he knows he's too unsteady to get up and punch him in the face.
"And you, sadly, are barely functioning on your own. You're fast on your way to becoming a tragic footnote in history, now the apocalypse is no longer the main event."
"Why the fuck do you care?"
"Let's just say business is slow, what with all the demonic omens that have had people huddling terrified in their bed these past few months. It's so much harder to get people to hand over their soul when the thought of hell is not so distant and abstract."
Dean grunts like he doesn't give a crap. But he'd be dead if he wasn't curious.
"So, what are you doing here?"
"Perhaps I missed you," Crowley says. With all the affection of a snake about to swallow something whole.
"I find that really unlikely," Dean offers with no enthusiasm at all.
"It was worth a try," Crowley adds. He settles himself in the chair opposite him. "Maybe I owe you for jamming a cog into the apocalypse machine and rendering it unfit for the purpose. Maybe I don't like owing people."
Dean glares at him.
"You wouldn't stay in debt if it bothered you, you'd just kill me."
Crowley makes a soft, surprised noise.
"And here I assumed being drunk would make you even stupider than usual."
"I have my moments," Dean says, stiffly mocking.
Crowley pulls a face that Dean can't quite read, then rolls his eyes.
"Fine, I have my reasons for not wanting you a fly-ridden corpse in some nameless motel room."
"Good luck with that," Dean says. But he doesn't take a drink. Can't quite make himself with the sharp smell of demon in the room. Not that he isn't drunk enough to kill already.
"I thought you'd appreciate the amusing irony at least, in your own blundering sort of way."
Dean glares at him. "Don't expect a round of applause, you'll be sorely disappointed."
"Oh, I'm sure I'll survive."
~~~~~
The next hunt Dean goes on, he has a smart-mouthed demon along for the ride. All heat and mockery in the passenger seat. He still hasn't told Dean what he wants. He's still hard as hell to ignore. But Crowley knows how to kill things. Dean's still working through a frustrated sort of revenge in the only way he knows how.
They end up in some sort of comedy one-upmanshipment that ends in blood.
None of it theirs.
The Impala isn't right, it's not even close to right. But it's not as empty as it was before.
~~~~~
It's not like Sam and Ruby.
It's nothing like them.
Dean's convinced himself as much over too many late nights and too many bottles of whatever the hell was going cheap. He knows not to trust him. He knows - never forgets - what Crowley is, and Crowley certainly makes no fucking apologies for it. He knows Crowley will have a plan, demons like Crowley always have a plan. Not that Crowley is your average demon. More unpredictable, smarter maybe, but just as ruthless. He has a twisted sense of humour and he'll quite happily let Dean get smacked around before he decides to do anything. But shitty, demonic help is better than no help at all.
Dean knows from calling Bobby that the world's still a mess, and there aren't enough people dealing with it. Too many hunters got taken out. Not enough new blood, not enough people who know. For all that they stopped the apocalypse, the world's not exactly full of roses now. Once the smoke clears there's just as many - if not more - demons. It's like they brought the apocalypse to a slamming halt, rather than fixed anything. Stemmed the tide and left the world half flooded.
But then this is what they asked for, wasn't it, more of the same. For tomorrow to be just like yesterday. And at any other time in the past year Dean would have killed for more of the same.
This isn't the same. Because now he's fighting one man down.
The price was too high. The price is always too damn high.
~~~~~
Dean stops drinking.
He stops drinking as much.
It's either that or lose every conversation they ever have. Because he just knows that's probably going to end badly for him eventually.
~~~~~
Dean has no idea why Crowley sticks around. All smirk, self-assurance and tailoring that looks out of place everywhere they go. His disappearing/reappearing act was old a week ago. But he doesn't quit it, no matter how much Dean complains, bitches or threatens. Dean's never quite been able to get his head around the way Crowley barely reacts to having a hunter around. Like Dean hasn't killed a thousand demons in his life. It's like he's never been worried that Dean might be able to kill him. Hell, that might be even more true now. Why be afraid of a messed-up, drunken hunter who drifts from monster to monster like he's just looking for the one that'll tear him open. Though if Dean really does have a death wish he's too fucking good for it to stick. Too determined to kill anything which comes close.
Or Crowley's doing a better job of watching his back than he's making out.
He knows Crowley's got to be here for a reason. The fact that the reason doesn't seem to be to kill him, at least not yet, isn't as reassuring as it should be. Because wanting him dead is easy, anything else - hell - anything else is going to be complicated. And Dean's probably not going to see it coming until it's too late.
Currently the demon's leant back on the ratty motel couch, watching Dean polish his boots like the manual labour is quaint and fascinating. But Dean's slogged through enough wet fields to know that if you don't take care of you boots they'd fuck you over when you least expected it.
He points a finger at Crowley
"No using me as bait again, tonight. I mean it, you quit that or I'm going to make it my mission in life to make you drink holy water."
Crowley folds one leg over the other.
"I use you as bait because it works. Monsters die, everyone goes home happy."
"Except the bait," Dean grumbles.
"Dean, you don't want to be happy. You find happy, strange and uncomfortable and would probably shoot it in the face if it showed up unexpectedly on your doorstep."
"We go in the front," Dean insists. Because Crowley is far too attached to the stealth attack.
"That's your answer to everything isn't it? 'Blunder in blind and hit everything that moves with a big stick." Crowley drags out the words, in a way that says pretty clearly he thinks Dean's incapable of thinking up a better plan.
"It's worked for me so far."
"It worked for you when you had a mountain at your back masquerading as a human being," Crowley says flatly.
There's no bite there, but Dean thinks he's making a point anyway. He grits his teeth and glares at him over the top of the boot he's polishing.
"I'm doing it my way. Because we both know you'll do whatever the fuck you want anyway."
"I do whatever it takes. When you give them the opportunity to fight back you're immediately working with odds. And considering most of the things you go after are demons in human skin, I'm amazed you haven't had all your bones broken for the fun of it yet."
"I do fine - we did fine," Dean says. There's still a grate in his voice. Something that can't - won't talk about Sam.
"I would have thought you'd take advantage of the element of surprise. Since genetics didn't see fit to grace you with an abundance of intelligence."
"This coming from a demon, when the most you can manage up here is something that looks like something a smoker hacked up."
"Are we name-calling now, then? That's really not a smart avenue to venture down. Oh, the insults I've heard, Dean."
Dean rolls his eyes and grunts irritation. Because he knows having a pissing contest with a demon never ends well, and they have more important things to do.
"Don't you have other things to do, people to con out of their souls?"
"Oh, I don't con them. The sales pitch is one hundred percent upfront. That's what makes it so beautiful."
Dean dumps his boots, drags a bottle out of his other bag and spins the lid off.
"If you're not having fun feel free to leave any time," he says stiffly.
"Maybe you're growing on me," Crowley says slowly, then pulls a face as if this isn't in any way a good thing. "Though, on the upside, it's been a while since I've had an excuse to just kill things." Crowley eyes are flat black and that should make Dean want to shove a knife straight through his chest.
Instead he tosses the bottle into Crowley's lap, watches amber liquid slosh over his suit.
Crowley's bitchface has a flavour of long-suffering frustration to it.
But he doesn't give the bottle back.
~~~~~
For all that Crowley knows how to fake civilised, he's not. His mask may be deeper than most, more expensive and packaged up with an accent from half a world away. But it's still just a mask. Dean's seen the flash of his teeth. Seen the way he watches people like they're little more than amusing and occasionally useful parts of the scenery. The way he's not above slicing corners clean off, to get where he needs to be.
But Dean's not going to let that recklessness apply to him.
He takes the bruises and the twinges. He can live with them, he's had them before. And when they hunt vampires in Ripley, Ohio he knows he's warm and inviting as hell.
Crowley proves he's more than strong enough to tear a vampires head clean off, leaving half his face painted and running red. All the fancy pocket handkerchiefs in the world aren't cleaning that off. Put blood all over something and you can tell clear enough what it is.
Dean doesn't miss the way Crowley looks at the woman they're trying to save. Like she has no meaning at all - it makes Dean shove hard at his chest and after a fraction of a second, solid turns to soft. Crowley takes one careful step back.
"We don't kill people," Dean says. Harsh and angry.
"You don't kill people," Crowley corrects. "And to save myself a truly migraine-inducing level of disapproval I'm working around your squeamishness."
Dean spends a long, exhausting month watching his own ass. While Crowley watches him over one expensive decanter of drink after another. Like he's amused by Dean's paranoia. By Dean's frustrated wait for the other shoe to drop.
It takes him another week to realise he's hunting better than he has since the end of the world. It's like he's been honed to a fine edge without even realising it. He feels sharp and clear and clean.
He should fucking hate it.
But he doesn't.
~~~~~
It's been exactly eight months since Sam died. Dean's been counting off the days in a haphazard sort of way. It's a special sort of punishment to force himself to remember. To make himself feel it. Though there's a muted edge to it now that makes the guilt louder than the pain. As if it's a betrayal that there might come a time when he gets used to this. Like that shouldn’t be possible and he's failing in some way by making the journey.
He drowns the guilt and the pain until his brain is an unsteady hum. Too drunk-heavy to pick a fight, too cold to stay out past the sharp chill of midnight. He finds his way back, always finds his way back. He thinks maybe he has a homing beacon in his head that always takes him back to the car.
Crowley's a solid shape, leant against the hood. Dean can recognise him drunk from a hundred feet away, in the dark. He doesn't know whether that's a good thing or not. He has no idea where Crowley goes when he's not with him. The goddamn circus for all he knows.
"Any more and you're going to drown, Winchester."
Dean looks down at the bottle he's holding, an absent judge of volume. He finds it emptier than it has any right to be. But there's enough left - enough to share. Share around the liquid-burn of it. Share the guilt and the pain of it. It seems appropriate, today, in the cold, dark of a shitty motel parking lot with someone who's probably never been human. Dean doesn't care if it's cheap-ass shit that Crowley wouldn’t be seen dead drinking. Drinking alone makes this too damn depressing, makes him some sad washed up drunk who can't deal with his own problems.
He waits for the smirk, for the words, Crowley always has words, some of them long - and Dean understands ninety percent of them, no matter what he fucking thinks - but Dean's not interested. The words turn into noise when he tips the bottle up to Crowley's mouth, but he's too drunk to pour straight. The demon ends up with cheap scotch rolling a line down his chin and throat. A wet, sharp, splash that Dean doesn’t even know why he's so amused by. But he's laughing, laughing all the way in until he's smothering his laughter in the brand new taste of Crowley's mouth.
There's a murmur, a vibration that sounds like a question. There's always too many words. Tonight Dean just wants him to shut up. He just wants Crowley to shut up and stop talking, just for tonight. So Dean pushes his mouth open and makes it so he can't talk at all.
Crowley's impossibly warm under his air-cooled fingers and he tastes like fire. He lets Dean push him, lets him dig his fingers into the expensive coat and shove him back into the room - then up against the door with a sharp weighty 'thud.' The bottle hits the floor, a crack of glass and a slow spill of liquid while Dean's digging a boot between Crowley's shiny, shiny shoes. He tugs at the jacket, at the slick-shine of belt underneath. Until Dean can pour anger all the way through him, all the way into him, and Crowley takes it, takes every single piece of it, and doesn't break.
Dean's the one who wakes up with bruises, sprawled out on a cheap motel bed with a jackhammer in his brain and a looseness in his limbs that he knows far too well.
He thinks he should be disgusted with himself. But it's more of a low level irritation, a heavy, creeping weight of disappointment. Because his life's just a shelf full of bad ideas, all going cheap.
Crowley doesn't say a word about what they did. He still looks at him like he's an idiot, still complains about everything from his choice of music to the weather. He still mocks him for being 'intellectually stunted.'
Dean stares at the world through sunglasses so the light doesn't send him blind, makes Crowley dig through the paper for something resembling a monster.
~~~~~
Crowley doesn't care so much about his clothes when Dean's trying to drag them all apart. Torn stitching is an accusing snap of sound, in-between the hard noises he makes every time their mouths slide apart. The buttons are uncooperative, so much so that Dean half-thinks the world's trying to tell him something. But everything comes free eventually sometimes in pieces.
Crowley laughs into Dean's mouth, low and smug and triumphant in a way that makes Dean want to fucking bite him. But he already knows that doesn't help. Biting just makes him rougher, makes him vicious. And that's far too easy to get lost in.
"Oh please, don't restrain yourself on my account."
"Shut up, shut the fuck up," Dean tells him. Before he's crushing whatever else Crowley has to say back into his mouth. Under the hard bite of teeth that's so finely balanced between anger and greed that he can't tell the difference.
Dean ends up shoved down in the sheets, legs spread around Crowley's solid waist, hips tilted up, body shaking on every quick, hard thrust. And then he's not thinking anything at all. Pushed too far to the crumbling edge of reckless, stupid lust to care any more. Every breath falling out fast and hot.
~~~~~
They spend the end of the year in a hospital full of ghosts. Dean can see his breath in every corridor, wind whistling through the shattered windows. The place is a nest of the dead. There are more than Dean's ever seen in one place, and the basement's full of old bones.
Crowley tells fucking horror stories of enough ghosts collecting together and making some sort of proto-mass that has all the powers of a wraith. Draining all the life from someone with a touch. Dean half thinks he's messing with him. But there's something tight, something wary in Crowley's expression.
It turns out there's no proto-mass of evil. Just a lot of bones to burn, a lot of cold hands ready to slam Dean through the nearest door.
Crowley's more comfortable with things that can bleed. Though he does hand over a spell that makes them all freeze in their tracks like they're caught in amber. Dean's just pissed that he had to collect a shit-ton of bruises before the guy was willing to give up his secrets.
"I like you with bruises," Crowley says.
Dean's honestly not sure whether he wants to punch him in the face for that or not.
~~~~~
It snows, for the whole of December. Like God's trying to obliterate the whole damn world. It disappears inch by inch under a carpet of white. The room's freezing and the car's stuck behind a snow bank the size of an overturned oil tanker.
Crowley could go wherever the hell he wants, but he stays. He stays in Dean's hotel room and complains about the cold and the music on the radio, and the cheap alcohol. He complains about everything until Dean shoves him down, and shuts him up.
The bed barely takes the both of them, Dean ends up straddling Crowley's waist, knees dug half into the sheets and half into pale skin.
They fuck like that. It's rough and messy and uncomfortable, Dean shoving down and back, fingers dug in the muscle of Crowley's upper arms.
He doesn’t let the demon talk this time, doesn't let Crowley have free reign with his sharp tongue and smart-ass insults. The silence is furious and desperate and only half broken with the clipped-out, obscene little noises of greedy pleasure.
Crowley's eyes are completely black, voice a wreck in his throat. Making noises that barely sound human at all. Fingers too hard at Dean's waist and thighs, digging in too tight. Until Dean shakes apart in three, hard shoves. He ends up slumped over, letting each shiver slide all the way through him, making quiet, breathless noises of pain and relief.
Crowley catches a hand in Dean's hair, pulls his head up and kisses him. It's wide open and lazy in a way they just don't. Dean stays there, stays there until the slow slide-press of fingers at the back of his neck leaves edges of guilty anger rolling through him.
~~~~~
They're not doing it any more.
Dean's thought the same thing more times a day than he can count, but this time he means it. There's a difference between making something a habit because you just want something and - hell, expecting it, relying on it.
Needing it.
He won't do that with a demon. He just won't. He knows his own patterns well enough to know when he falls into a groove he has a hard time crawling back out and this can't become a thing. This messy, whatever the hell it is, that leaves them fighting one minute and fucking the next. Bad habits, and he knows well enough that when you sink in too deep you get in a position where things start to look different. And Dean knows he's falling into the same hole as Sam.
That's not what he says though. He just mouths off something that's half bullshit and half insults. He tells Crowley he's had enough. The lazy smirk is tighter, less easy. The sarcasm is sharper. But Crowley doesn't protest. He seems more amused than anything else.
He mocks Dean for his new-found martyrdom and self-control, and his return to the comfortable world of alcohol abuse.
Dean just takes the fucking bottle into the bathroom, and drinks until he can't feel a thing.
A week later, Crowley's digging shards of small teeth out of his back and Dean can still hear the snapping crack of the creature's jaws. Can still half feel the damn things crawling up for his throat, claws shredding his shirt open.
He leaves the bottle of scotch on the floor and fucks Crowley until he stops talking.
~~~~~
It's not supposed to be like this.
Crowley's supposed to be gone by the time Dean wakes up. That's the way it always goes. Instead the bed is an expanse of warm sheets and warmer demon. Heavy over one of Dean's legs, a breath of laughter curling out in the half-light of the room.
Crowley slides a hand under the pillow, gets his fingers round the knife Dean keeps there. Not Sam's knife, it's just bright steel with no markings. Good enough to gut something all the same.
Dean catches his wrist, follows his hand to the chill of the handle and slips it out of his fingers.
"I keep the knife."
A smile slides slowly onto Crowley's face.
"In case I want to what, carve my name into your skin?"
Dean knows better than to give him back the knife, knows so much better. But he doesn't stop Crowley's fingers from sliding round the handle and gripping tight.
"Do you?" Dean asks.
There's a twist of mouth, an edge of a smile. But there's a focus there, an intensity that seems sharper when Crowley's eyes are human.
"Not just my name," Crowley admits. "I'd quite like to slice you with a bunch of old and interesting symbols and put their twins into my skin. There's nothing quite like messy, ancient blood magic."
Dean grunts.
"And I thought you were civilised."
"I'm a civilised demon," Crowley points out. Or reminds him, always reminds him. So Dean never forgets. His focus is on the naked skin of Dean's chest now, like he's thinking about it.
"And what does that get you?" Dean demands.
"Power," Crowley says simply. "And it would make you mine."
Dean reacts to that, instinctively. A grunt of angry refusal in his throat. Because he belongs to no one.
"No one gets to make me do crap I don't want to do."
"I said it makes you mine. I never said it makes you obedient. Not that the idea isn't -" Crowley pauses, hot fingers catching tight in Dean's skin. "-satisfying."
"If you're in charge it's the same damn thing. You're a demon, and don't think I've forgotten that, don't think you don't remind me of that at every opportunity." Dean shifts under him but doesn't try and move away. Doesn't push at him.
"And angels have proven themselves to always have noble intentions," Crowley counters, all loose mockery and edges.
"I wouldn’t let an angel own me either."
Crowley's fingers dig in just below where the burn from Castiel's handprint rests on his arm.
"Is that right?"
"What do you really want?" Dean asks, or maybe demands. The conversation's slipping from his grasp in a way he's getting used to. It's like they're never talking about what they're talking about. As if Crowley's always prodding for answers to questions he's not actually asking.
"Maybe I want to do something for you," Crowley says.
"Bullshit." Dean reacts immediately and instinctively. Crowley laughs like he's genuinely amused - then shrugs, a strangely honest and inelegant gesture.
"Maybe I want to own you. Maybe I want to call you mine. You're a very shiny prize, Dean Winchester."
Dean shakes his head.
"That's not the only reason."
"I need a way into and out of hell," Crowley says simply.
Dean goes very still.
"I can go there on my own, but bringing someone out, that's a different matter. You're an angelic vessel, bright and fierce and furious. There's no better anchor than you. "
Dean can feel the thunder of his own heartbeat. The steady increase of weight where Crowley is carefully pressing him back into the sheets.
"And this magically makes that possible," Dean says, throat bone dry.
"Your paranoia is adorable, you realise that. Dean, I wouldn't need magic to make you do what I want. But I could use it, and I could make you do a lot of things without telling you about it, and you know it."
Dean wants to snap back that he'd like to see him try. Instead he bites his tongue and grunts something which might be reluctant agreement.
"I could have fucked you any time I wanted to," Crowley says. He manages to make it sound nothing like a threat. "Though I doubt you would have enjoyed it as much."
Dean does dig his fingers in then. Which gets him a brief, soft noise which isn't anywhere close to unhappy.
"So what, now I'm broken you think it'll be fun to tie me up with strings and call me your puppet?"
Crowley laughs, quick and hard.
"Dean, you're so far away from broken it's not even funny. For all your many and varied flaws, you are a thing of sharp and terrible fucking beauty -"
Crowley makes a noise, caught in the middle of a sentence like he can't resist, fingers dug in Dean's hair which is too short to take his aggression. But he drags Dean's head up anyway and kisses him. Bites at the soft edge of his mouth just hard enough to make Dean grunt protest.
Dean doesn't pull away until he stops.
"No one gets to control me," he says.
"I won't have control over you. Not like you think. And you're going to say yes," Crowley says. "Because it's Sam."
Dean stays quiet. Swallows whatever words want to come out of his throat.
"Because, no matter what you promised him, when have you ever done as you're told and made the smart choices," Crowley hisses into his ear. "But, I get you either way."
Dean digs his fingers into the too-warm skin of Crowley's back, drags air through his nose and says nothing.
"So, you did it all for you," Dean says quietly, rough and unsurprised.
"Demon," Crowley reminds him, a breath away from his mouth. And Dean makes an unhappy, angry noise, but lets Crowley kiss him.
"Fucking bastard," Dean manages. Though his fingers are still moving, still digging into the warmth of him. The weight of him, which he knows is going to be near impossible to let go of.
"Perhaps it wasn't entirely for me," Crowley says. "You're easy to get used to."
Crowley's slides over and down, crushing him back into the sheets and holding him there. He's heavy and warm and he can never stay away for long, has to pull Dean's jaw down and kiss him again. Dean takes it all, the sharp dig of fingers into his skin and the hard - far too possessive crush of mouth.
Then Crowley lets his mouth free, tips his head back and looks at him.
"I get you, you get Sam. You won't get a better bargain than that Dean."
Dean grunts something that's half agreeable and half lost. Then he spreads his arms out, relaxes, and waits for the first dig of the knife.