Same AU as All He Can Think.

oOo

She was exactly where he needed her to be.

Crowley had kept tabs on Castiel—on anything going on in Heaven he could keep tabs on, really—knowing it'd be far too easy for everything to go all Revelations on them again if she didn't play her cards right. So far she'd done everything he would've bet on her doing: Tried to pull the same trick with Sam she had with Dean a couple years ago, gone home to her new adoring fans, completely failed to properly take advantage of the situation, and promptly gotten her arse handed to her by the new alpha angel on the block. Raphael. The last archangel left on the board. If only Lucifer'd stuck around long enough to do him like he'd done Gabriel before kindly buggering off to the cage... Ah well, no matter. All he needed to make sure this sorted itself out right was a plan and a partner, and he already had the plan.

He stood in the shadows, watching Dean's little Angel of Thursday watch him from the shadows. She had that look he'd seen at many a crossroads: Desperate. Out of options. Knowing it's time to cross the line that must never be crossed, but unable to step over it quite yet. That was when you made the offer. It was something a lot of people didn't get about his business: For customers like Cas, putting your soul up for sale wasn't crossing the line. The line was drawn somewhere else, often somewhere petty, like being too proud to enlist help from other humans or admit poor judgement might have led to the present predicament. Selling your soul just didn't hurt as much as stopping to think you might not be enough to fix your own problems.

He had no doubt that if he asked her Castiel would insist that such pettiness was beneath her, that hers was a noble threshold: For Dean's own sake, she mustn't trouble him for help. If he really were to ask maybe she could even convince him to believe her; that meatsuit of hers was, after all, the persuasive kind of thing any crossroads demon would trade half his commission for. He wasn't here to ask her what justifications she whispered to herself to get through the night, though. He was here to make a deal.

It ended up one of the easiest pitches of his entire career. All he had to do was tell her everything he guessed she wanted to hear, and bollocks if he didn't hit the mark every damn time. Really, the whole negotiation ultimately served to confirm a suspicion he'd had about God's favorite angel for a while: She wasn't all that different from him, better-tailored meatsuit notwithstanding. She'd looked at the Michael-shaped hole in Heaven and had the exact same thought he had looking at the Lucifer-shaped hole in Hell. All said and done, the only real difference between the two of them was he didn't feel the need to tell himself silly lies about what he was, but that's just bloody angels for you. And they act like Hell has all the liars.

oOo

"There's nothing to discuss."

It was the first thing she said to him upon arrival in his "office," the room where he'd be doing most of his work in the coming months. He'd already unpacked most of his favorite implements and set aside something special for tomorrow's session with the djinn. It was a pain to uproot and move his entire operation to a new locale, but worth it: Thanks to his and Castiel's little performance today the Winchesters thought him dead and would stay out of his business now. Having them working for him was fun while it lasted, but he was sure he was getting close to Purgatory now, and it wouldn't do to have them hanging about.

He'd scheduled this meeting ahead of time, in case their staged skirmish left any loose ends to tie up. He'd heard businessmen of this age refer to this kind of meeting as a "postmortem" and the expression always made him smile, barely quelling the urge to ask whose. Come to think of it, in this case it would be his, wouldn't it?

Cas was right of course, about there being nothing to cover, but he didn't feel like agreeing; she'd take it as an excuse to leave, and he couldn't be having that. He liked penciling her into his calendar like this. It was an undeniable ego boost to have a little slice of Heaven at his beck and call and, besides, it was good to have these opportunities to talk with her. Banter. Flirt a bit, much as that felt like trying to seduce a marble statue. He liked to think these episodes of interaction served to build up some camaraderie between them, a rapport that set their relationship apart from whatever she had with her fellow soldiers upstairs and the toxically codependent mess that was her bond with the Winchesters.

"I think there's room for some review here," he said, "Have fun 'killing' me, then?" He gave her his most charming smirk and tried to pretend it wasn't wasted on her.

"Yes," she replied simply, without a hint of irony.

"Have fun snogging the enemy as well?"

"Yes." The exact same tone. Didn't even blink. He'd expected some degree of shame. Sure, it was too much to hope she'd care how he felt about Meg and her cabal of Lucifer loyalists, but Cas was still an angel and Meg was still a demon, right?

"Brilliant. If I'd known you enjoyed kissing demons so much I would've taken my time when we finalized our arrangement." It wasn't the first time he'd regretted holding back in that moment. In that moment, though, it'd seemed the thing to do. Cas was so obviously itching to seal the deal and run upstairs to give Raphael what for that teasing her hardly felt wise. He'd settled for a chaste brush of their lips and gotten the hell out of her way, happy to let her get on with taking the insufferable archangel down a peg. Maybe if she were a man he would've lingered, made a production of it. He generally did when it came to men; nothing tasted quite as delicious as a squirming homophobe silently begging him to get his tongue out of his mouth as he reluctantly relinquished his soul.

"I didn't have time to let you dawdle," said Cas, as if she'd followed his train of thought.

"Dawdle?" He couldn't repress a laugh at the word choice. "I'd've done you better than that, dove. You know..." He eyed her vessel for what must've been the thousandth time by now. Persuasive.

"Yes?"

Funny, his meatsuit's heart was pounding like a nervous schoolboy's. Maybe he accidentally threw some of the squishy bits in there off-kilter when he did the whole "burning up with me bones" bit.

"Unless I'm mistaken," he said, "You have time now."

She tilted her head curiously.

"We already sealed our contract," she said.

"I'm not hearing a no..."

He heard the telltale flutter of wings and suddenly they were face to face, far closer than most humans would deem socially acceptable. To his credit, he didn't flinch, merely offered a curious head-tilt of his own. Sometimes he liked to let himself forget she was taller than him. Couldn't bloody well do that now. He waited a moment to see if she'd make the first move. No? Fine. Malfunctioning heart or no, he wasn't one to back down just because some sanctimonious bird in a trenchcoat was looking down at him like he was a particularly interesting insect she'd spotted on the ground. He closed the bare distance between them, and this time he didn't hold his tongue in check.

She didn't either. He hadn't expected that. Nor had he expected long, spindly fingers sliding up his chest, fisting in the fabric of his shirt to pull him close and hold him there, as if to keep him from wandering off. They'd both kept their eyes open, which he found a bit off-putting. He didn't dare shut his eyes, though; he knew if he did it'd feel like losing, even though this didn't feel like winning. She didn't shut hers either. Without really meaning to, Crowley's hands landed on her waist and tried to draw her closer—not that there was much space left between them—but it was like tugging on a support beam. As their tongues dueled she made a breathy little noise that did things to his squishy bits he'd rather not confess.

Looking back on the postmortem later he'd wish this had been their contract-sealing kiss. It was more fun, for one, but mostly he figured if they'd started here it wouldn't've taken half as long for it to occur to him to consider her a possible threat. A hint of relief mingled with his disappointment when too soon she let go of him and pulled back.

She looked at him like she was somewhere between intrigued and repulsed. He probably had about the same look. It wasn't that he hadn't enjoyed the kiss. He had. It was fun. He wouldn't say no if she wanted to do another one. He doubted she would, though, because it'd also felt so very wrong. Not a fun flavor of wrong either, not something sexy like forbidden or dangerous or even perverse. More like... incorrect. Like biting into an apple and tasting chocolate.

He heard her wings again—this time he even felt a little breeze ruffle his hair—and she was standing back where she'd been before they embarked on their experiment, as if it had never happened. There was a beat of quiet, and then she said, "I don't know how he plans to do it, but you should know Dean still intends to retrieve Sam's soul."

Crowley nodded. He couldn't imagine how Squirrel was going to go about it either, but it seemed the sort of thing that could wind up with them crossing paths if he wasn't careful.

"I'll keep that in mind. No talking him out of it, eh?"

"I asked him to reconsider, but he's determined."

"Shame. And for what? If you ask me, Moose's personality's shown nothing but improvement since the day you pulled him out."

Cas looked uncomfortable.

"You don't agree?" Crowley asked.

"He threatened to kill me."

"Moose?"

"Yes."

She'd said it matter-of-factly, as if she were telling him nothing more significant or note-worthy than the fact that Sam was tall. Crowley didn't buy her nonchalance, though; it's hard not to take a death threat personally.

"Sorry to hear that," he said, surprised at how sincere his voice sounded.

"Why? It's not as if he's a true threat. Not to me."

"Bet Lilith thought the same thing once," Crowley muttered, rolling his eyes, "Obviously it bothers you a little, or you wouldn't've brought it up in the first place; pardon me for offering a bit of sympathy."

She crossed her arms and glared at him.

"I don't need your 'sympathy.' Are we done here?"

"Yes." He matched her snippy tone. Once more he heard that irksome flapping, and she was gone.

"See?" he muttered, "Camaraderie."

oOo

"My, my. Playing with fire again?"

She didn't laugh, surprise surprise. Just glared at him from within the ring of holy fire. For a second Crowley considered turning around and leaving—or maybe even staying right where he was—without letting her out. She could stew for a bit, take a moment to really appreciate how thoroughly buggered she'd be without him.

But no, that wouldn't do. This was an opportunity. He finally had the chance to convince her once and for all their alliance was worth more to her than her discipleship to the Church of Dean Winchester. He wasn't going to waste this opportunity by pissing her off instead. With a small wave of his hand he killed the fire. No fuss, no theatrics.

"If you touch the Winchesters..." she growled, charging toward him the instant the flames died.

He could've teleported out of her way, but why bother? He could tell she wasn't in smite mode, so it wasn't as if she was about to really hurt him. Let her tenderize his meatsuit a bit if it made her feel better.

She grabbed him by the shirt collar, one hand clenching roughly around a fistful of fabric while the other swung back to punch him in the eye—he was just thinking to himself, Vicious bird, going right for the eyes—but before she followed through she hesitated, bewildered. No doubt waiting for him to react. Fight back. Teleport. Say something. Flinch, at least. All he did was look her in the eye and raise one eyebrow. She didn't let go of him, but slowly she lowered her fist, and it seemed safe to talk again.

"Please," he said, "Heard you the first time. I promise, nary a hair on their artfully tousled heads." She didn't look convinced.

"Besides," he went on, "I think they've proven my point for me. It's always your friends, isn't it? In the end. We try to change, we try to improve ourselves, it's always our friends who gotta claw into our sides and drag us back. But you know what I see here? The new God—" He gestured at her, slightly, in the limited space between them. "—and the new Devil..." He trailed off, seeing the look in her eye, feeling her grip on his shirt tightening. Funnily enough, the sensation reminded him of the time they'd kissed.

"Enough," she said, voice low, "You. Stop. Talking. And get out of my sight." She released her grip on him abruptly and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. As if he needed her permission to leave.

Come off it, he wanted to say, Like you haven't been thinking the same thing from the start, like you're not aching to plant yourself in Raphael's throne once all this is done.

He sighed. He was not wasting this opportunity. He knew he could pull it off, dammit. She'd already come so far. The Winchesters were ready to wash their hands of her. She wasn't smiting him right now. Frig's sake, she'd let him kiss her just to see what it felt like; this should be easy.

She was still standing uncomfortably close to him, staring him down with a cold, dangerous, rage. It was a rage that was frayed along the edges, though. There was weariness there as well. She was fighting a war, after all, when she wasn't busy antagonizing him or watching the Winchesters sleep. He sighed again.

"I wish I could understand why we don't get along..." he murmured.

She gave him a look like he'd questioned why fish don't ride bicycles more often. At least the confusion seemed to defuse her to some degree.

"What?" he said, "You think you have to turn your nose up at me just because I'm from the other side of the tracks? We're the same style of thing, y'know, you and me." He more or less believed that, at the moment. Later he'd look back and realize it was one of the stupidest things he'd ever said.

Cas turned her back on him with a scoff.

"If that was supposed to be a joke, I'm not in the mood."

"I'm serious."

"Then you're delusional."

"Am I? All I'm really saying is you've got more in common with me than you ever will with your pet humans. They've no bloody idea what it's like for you, do they? Crawling through the firmament to go slumming on the mortal plane, stuffing yourself in a meatsuit so it won't sauté their precious brains just to look at you. You do realize that to them we're the same thing, right? To them we're nothing but things that don't belong in this world, popping in, wearing meat that isn't ours, interfering with their lives on the behalf of Heaven or Hell. It's not like your Winchesters love your hometown any more than mine; do you think they really see a difference between you and me? Especially now?"

She didn't turn back around to face him yet. That was disappointing, but at least it meant she hadn't gotten the urge again to punch him yet either.

"Three hundred years ago you were meat," she pointed out tersely.

That was actually a good point; she was a lot older than him, old enough that the differences—age-wise, at least—between her and him and her and the Winchesters were practically identical. He wasn't going to fuss about her trying to win the argument on a technicality, though; that he'd gotten her to engage at all meant he'd already won.

"Thought humans were more than that to you," he replied, "I was a soul, three hundred years ago."

"Briefly," Cas conceded, finally turning back to him. She'd lost her rage now, and all that was left was that heavy weariness, with a thin coat of irritation painted on top. It was a look he'd seen on her a lot lately, the look she tended to get before fluttering off, the face that said she was at the end of her rope already and couldn't tolerate much more of him today.

"But by the time you died," she went on, quietly, "Your soul was no longer your own, was it? You traded it for more meat." Her eyes narrowed. "You could have known eternal bliss in Heaven, Crowley, but you chose Hell instead. And now you honestly ask what the difference is between us?"

Crowley shrugged.

"May sound grim when you put it like that, but, 'Better to reign,' eh?"

She stared at him a while, quiet. He was thinking up more to say when she muttered "We're done here." and disappeared.

"You're just mad 'cause you know I'm right," he told the empty room.

oOo

"Had enough yet, luv? No? Fine..."

He was elbow-deep in the thing Castiel had brought him, the thing from Purgatory that called itself Ellie. He wasn't having fun, like he normally did in his "office." This was different. This wasn't like all the Alphas he'd taken apart over the past few months, who could only give him at best hints and clues, half-remembered legends, tiny pieces of the puzzle barely worth the time it took to wrench it all out of them. Ellie knew. No "the old stories say," no "no one's ever tried this, but..." She knew exactly how to open the door. It was so obvious he could swear he saw a bullet-point list of step-by-step instructions floating behind her eyes, hiding in her brain, begging him to rip it out, but Ellie was proving a tough one to tear. A couple hours he'd been at it, with nothing to show. Castiel stood by and watched him the entire time, impatience radiating from her like anxious heat.

"We don't have time for this..." she murmured into one of the gasp-y quiet pauses between Ellie's screams.

"Tell me something I don't know," Crowley snapped back.

"Dean must be looking for us by now. If we give him long enough, he will find a way—"

Without really meaning to, Crowley's hands clenched and twisted in a way that made Ellie shriek. His breath came in tense, shallow huffs as extracted himself from his work and whipped around to face the angel.

"Well if you're that worried about him," he growled, "Why don't you fix him like you did his friggin' girlfriend?!" He was shouting again. Dammit. It never did him any good, not with her, and it wasn't even doing much to make him feel better. Couldn't be helped, though; out of all the spiteful little Winchester-related betrayals Castiel had flippantly committed since their agreement began, this one pissed him off the most. He had known before that the whole neuralyzer bit was something angels could do, but figured God must've made some rule against it that kept Cas in check where her brothers and sisters had run amok. So long as the Winchesters remained in the dark he'd been happy to respect that, and even when they finally found her out he thought he might as well leave well enough alone and deal with it himself if it meant one less row with her. But this was the last damn straw. What she wouldn't do to save her own arse—both their arses—she'd do in a heartbeat just because Dean bloody Winchester asked nicely. He supposed he could hardly act surprised, but nevertheless it boiled his blood to know after everything they'd been through together—and everything Dean refused to do for her—he was still where she drew her damn line.

Cas glanced away from him guiltily.

"Out of the question," she said flatly.

"Out of the question!" he repeated at a hysterically high pitch, "Do you hear yourself right now? First you tell me we're running out of time, and then, when I point out the best way to buy us more, you tell me it's 'out of the question!'"

What was he even doing, having this argument with her? Like he'd ever have half the sway her sodding Righteous Man did. What was he, a battered housewife crying into a glass of red wine, sniffling "I know I can change him!" between refills?

She was gazing at him—more through him, really—with an expression he couldn't decipher. A slice of his brain he wanted to light on fire dared to hope she was actually giving some consideration to what he was saying.

"Step aside," she said.

"What?" He looked over his shoulder at Ellie's ragged, bloodied form as if he'd forgotten she was there. "Don't tell me you picked now to grow a conscience on me..."

He looked back to Cas to see she'd picked up a scalpel from his tray of tools. That should've been his first hint, that she didn't go for her own blade. The way she held it should've helped him catch on as well: delicately, a princess picking up her favorite fountain pen to write a decree, not a warrior wielding a sword on the battlefield. The scalpel was a tool, not a weapon.

"We don't have time for this. Step aside," she repeated.

Confused, Crowley took too long to respond, and with a frustrated sigh Cas stepped forward and shoved him out of the way with the hand not holding the scalpel.

For a full minute she stood over Ellie, scalpel in hand, still and silent. She stared down at her like she was a maths problem she was trying to do in her head. Ellie looked as puzzled as he was but was either too exhausted or too frightened to ask about Castiel's intentions. Crowley was about to speak up, but suddenly, at last, Cas moved.

Ellie gasped, as much from surprise as pain. Castiel was picking up where Crowley had left off, and she knew what she was doing.

He watched her, alternately feeling too shocked to be impressed and too impressed to be shocked. All those times she'd hung around while he was working, pointedly ignoring his subjects' agony, he'd thought she was merely masking her displeasure, too proud to let on his methods bothered her. Maybe he'd been a bit right; she likely did think herself too good to speak to him any more than she deigned necessary. Now, however, he understood it was never an appeal to mercy she was holding back—Did the word "mercy" hold any meaning to this brutal vision of wrath incarnate?—if anything, she must've been longing to give him pointers.

"Bloody hell..." he reflexively whispered in one of her particularly vicious moments, but it was a stupid thing to say. He knew bloody Hell. Bloody Hell was home, and bloody Hell was his. This was not. This was something older, bigger, and maybe even bloodier. This was bloody Heaven.

Before long Ellie broke and told them everything: The blood, the words, the eclipse. All so damn easy. They just might pull it off after all.

"Well done, dove," he told her in the afterglow. He only sounded half-serious, still recovering from the strangeness of Cas winning this sort of game. Right now she was preoccupied with cleaning the blood from the tools she had used and carefully putting them back into their proper places on his tray. Ellie was still restrained but had gone limp, unfocused eyes turned to the ceiling. Dead, probably.

"Are you surprised?" Cas asked, in a tone that found his surprise surprising. Fair enough, he supposed, now he stopped to think about it. She was, after all, a soldier. Heaven laid claim to many a soldier's soul, but plenty made it downstairs too, and those buggers could be damn nasty, even by Hell's standards. You meet enough of those and you start to get what seeing a war or two can do to a soul, what it can turn people into, and Castiel had seen every war since the dawn of the time.

"Surprised, intimidated, more than a bit aroused..." He raised one eyebrow coolly while she rolled her eyes. "But mostly perplexed: Why-ever did you hold out on me so long, Castiel? If I'd known you were so... efficient about it I would've let you play much sooner."

Setting the last of the now-clean tools down, she fixed him with a glare that wordlessly reminded him he never got to "let" her do anything. Aloud, she merely said, "Perhaps I assumed the ruler of Hell shouldn't need any help when it comes to torment."

"Well clearly I haven't had as much practice as you," said Crowley with a shrug.

Another glare.

"Am I wrong?" he asked.

She looked away. He thought in another second she'd be gone, but then she murmured, "You were right about Dean."

"Of course I was," he replied cheekily, "How so?" If he concentrated, he might be able to keep himself from exploding over her obsession with Squirrel again.

"There's so much..." Her voice was hushed, ragged with exhaustion. "So much he refuses to... so much he doesn't understand." Bitterly, she added, "Perhaps I really do share more common ground with you."

He wanted to feel smug that what he'd said had struck a nerve, but it felt like too little too late. She wasn't going to kill the Winchesters, and she wasn't going to give their minds a scrub, so why the hell should he give a damn that they'd hurt her feelings?

"I'm going to keep them out of the way," she said, voice firmer, "When the time comes."

"I've heard that one before."

"I mean it."

"Yeah?"

"I know how to deal with Dean Winchester."

Right. Then again, who doesn't? Serious as she sounded, he'd hate to be Sam right now.

"That you do." Speaking of Dean... "...you ever sleep with him?" It was something he'd wondered for a while.

She frowned.

"Are you talking about intercourse?"

He snorted.

"I'd count third base too."

Still frowning, she said, "No."

Sleep with me.

The thought was so loud in his head he half expected her to hear it, but he wouldn't dream of saying it aloud. Aloud it'd sound like begging, and he wasn't one to beg.

"I should go," she said, and he didn't argue.

If he were one to beg, he wondered how hard she'd tell him no.

oOo

Another day, another twenty-four agonizing hours spent waiting to see what happened next. Sometimes he wished he was the kind of thing that slept, but even if he could he doubted he would.

He should've known better than to go to Raphael. Castiel had buggered him over a barrel right enough, but better to spread wide and think of England than go looking for ways to piss her off. He wished he could go back in time and shake himself; did he really think teaming up with an archangel would do him any good after bringing Cas so close to Purgatory? Raphael was as threatening as a three-legged kitten compared to what Cas had become, and now he was stuck in this warded trailer, confined to his single-wide prison until either she found him or the Winchesters figured out how to kill her.

As he poured himself another drink he was caught between not wanting to listen to the TV—more news of her exploits—and not wanting to listen to the radio: Lyrics about how he'd been playin' where he shouldn't be playin,' a box of matches, etcetera, all quite apropos. But then he heard the sound he really didn't want to hear, the sound he'd spent a small eternity dreading:

The flutter of wings.

"Hello Crowley." Her face was placid, content. Beatific was the word, right? "You look stressed." On the radio Nancy Sinatra promised him these boots were gonna walk all over him.

"Bollocks."

So she'd found him. Never lost him, apparently. He'd closed his eyes and waited for the lights to go out, only to learn she wasn't here to smite.

"I have plans for you," she told him, and, even though a second ago he was sure she was about to end him, this was the most terrified of her he'd ever been.

She outlined their new arrangement, bled on his carpet a bit (He politely pretended not to notice.) and left. Alone again, he pondered whether Hell would get all that much "downsized" after all, once she started sending all her "enemies" downstairs. Must be an addictive sort of power, damning whomever you wanted to Hell with but a thought, the kind of power that changes people. He wasn't convinced it'd changed her, though. He wondered what it'd look like when that clearly-stressed vessel of hers finally came apart at the seams and sloughed off. Hard to know for sure, what with all those souls she ate, but he had a feeling it'd look like whatever eye-burning ball of celestial nasty had been there before Jayma Novak got involved, just bigger.

"Perhaps I really do share more common ground with you," she'd said, not so long ago. It made him laugh now, that he'd believed it enough to convince her. Just went to show the only thing they really had in common was their strange need to tell each other silly lies. But that's just working with bloody angels for you. Next time he needed a partner he'd steer damn well clear of Heaven.