Summary: Dean and Sam retire to Bobby's after successfully averting the apocalypse only to butt heads with the King of Hell who made the shack his home without them noticing. Can they get over their prejudices before somebody gets damned/ exercised? SLASH!

Bobby/Crowley, Dean/Castiel and eventual Sam/Gabriel

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It was a shotgun blast that jerked Bobby out of his nap he'd been enjoying in his lawn chair out back. Startled he only barely caught his knocked scotch glass, sloshing its contents over his weathered jeans. Cursing creatively he had already reflexively reached for his sawed-off when he heard muffled angry yelling from his front porch. He recognized those voices and paused, the boys were home.

Crowley's familiar voice bent in a shriek got him moving again. Two more shots had him sprinting.

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Sam flinched barely out of the Impala when the first shot went off. A long pained whine escaped seemingly from nothing as black blood spilled on the hardened dirt ground. Sam gave Dean an alarmed and exasperated look as his brother reloaded. Dean's eyes were trained on an invisible enemy fearfully. Dread filled Sam's stomach.

"Sammy get back in the car!" Dean barked edging backwards toward his car.

"Hellhounds?" Sam guessed breathlessly.

"Hound. It came out of nowhere! BOBBY?"

"Clearly I was being generous when I called you functioning morons!" Crowley said angrily, appearing suddenly out of the house and stepping to the wounded demon. "What inspired this act of cruelty against a puppy?" Dean leveled the gun at Crowley and cocked it. Crowley eyed the gun indignantly like the insult it was and bit out a sarcastic, "Really?"

"Crowley?" Sam said baffled. "What are you…"

"There are more now Sam. Two on his right, and fucking huge one coming from the left." Dean said urgently, gesturing with the barrel of his gun. "Where the fuck is Bobby, Crowley?"

"Do you have any idea who I AM!" The hellhounds feeling their master's rage reacted menacingly, hissing and snapping loudly at the hunters.

"DAMMIT, BOBBY?"

The adult hellhound attacked. BAM-BAM!

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When Bobby arrived on the scene Sam and Dean were huddled yelling inside the Impala while it rocked off its wheels and large dents and tears bloomed impossibly across the driver side door and roof. Crowley was knelt unimpressed by the boys' plight, tending and muttering to a whining nothing. If Bobby didn't know better, this situation would look ridiculous.

"Call off your dogs, dammit Crowley." Crowley looked up to give Bobby a scowl. The elder hunter moved so he could see over Crowley's shoulder and the pool of blood. "They're idjits, but they don' deserve this."

"Savages more like." Crowley offered bitterly, accent thick. "And they do absolutely deserve it. I've decided. I'm going to let her hunt them personally should their souls become due again." He straightened stiffly, brushing the blood off his hands with black kerchief and glared at the car. "And they will!" He bellowed it like a threat, but it was pointless since the Winchesters were too preoccupied to notice.

"Crowley." Bobby growled warningly. The demon's eyes snapped to the hunter's and what he found there took the wind out of his sails. Despite himself Crowley let out a high whistle and the car stopped moving. Scampering feet fell silent beside the demon and he braced a large invisible animal's muzzle as a thoughtless affectionate action with his palm. Bobby gestured vaguely to where he guessed the wounded hound was with his sawed-off. "Anything we can do for it?"

"Nothing you can do. Wonder boy shot her in the head." Crowley snapped. "I'll have to take her back. Now." He dipped to gather the hound and was about to leave when he hesitated, back to the hunter. "We'll have to reschedule our appointment, Luv."

Bobby grunted and waved him off. Crowley sighed, and then was gone. The wind suddenly picked up and then there was no more noise from the hounds. They must have followed.

The Impala looked rough from where he was standing. The door was screwed in like someone tried to gut it with a concrete drill. The side view mirror was gone. The windshield had spider web cracks originating from a considerable dip in the hood. It looked like the metal was even melted a little. Dean was frustratedly failing to get the car door open and finally settled with climbing across and out the passenger door after he couldn't even kick it out.

"Bobby," Sam sounded traumatized and unsure. "We made it." Dean tripped out of the car with an 'umph' and cussed loudly.

"Welcome boys," Bobby said in a forced casual voice. "I gonna need a drink. Want one?" Sam nodded mutely. "Come on then." Sam trailed after, leaving Dean to moan over his wrecked car.

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The whole house felt different to Sam. It wasn't that there weren't books, loose papers and empty bottles everywhere, because there certainly were. It was more like things were straightened neatly, less dusty, and moved slightly in a way that opened up the shack and made it look bigger. Brighter. Someone vacuumed. It was disconcerting.

"What's that smell?" Sam asked, following Bobby into the kitchen. On the island table next to a stack of books there was a basket of ground up purple plant arranged purposefully around some broken white twigs. Sam sniffed. Lavender, coconut, and some other third thing he couldn't identify. It couldn't be.., "Potpourri?"

"'Demon potpourri'" with air quotes, "is what Crowley called it. Covers up the smell of demon magic. Keeps it from smelling like Yellow Stone in here." Bobby grabbed three beers out of the fridge and popped two open, handing one to Sam.

"Oh," was all Sam could say while trying to take this all in. He took the beer and rubbed his nose with his thumb idly. He watched Bobby busy himself in the kitchen thoughtfully. The old hunter was putting things away slowly, like he wasn't sure where everything went anymore. By the sink there were some raw ingredients laid out and a bowl of something white and fluffy that Bobby inspected warily. Bobby sniffed it and then frowned at it. Sam spied a piece of paper and an unopened large bottle of wine on the ground and stooped to grab them. It was a recipe hand scratched in red ink in a script he didn't recognize. Things were starting to fall into place.

"Here," Sam said passing the paper over.

Bobby squinted at it then snorted a laugh, "Pizza, o' course." Sam moved to put the bottle in the liquor cabinet under the sink, but Bobby stopped him when he eyed the label. "Keep that one separate." He took it gingerly and put it on the counter next to the sink. It looked like an expensive sleek alien on his counter, but Bobby didn't seem to notice or care. He then offered an arm to pull Sam to his feet.

Letting himself be helped up, Sam saw that the demon seal on the ceiling clearly was broken. "Okay Bobby," Sam said anxiously. "I think we need to talk."

"Damn fucking straight 'we need to talk!'" Dean barged in, the rusty front door swinging wildly in his wake. "What was 'his royal pain-in-the-ass hell-spawn majesty' doing here?"

Sam raised an eyebrow at him, "That one kinda got away from you didn't it?"

"Shut it Sam." Dean had to force his hands to unclench to receive the beer from Bobby. It was a visible effort. "What is this? 'Damnation Plantation?' You've got hell hounds climbing out of the woodwork! Last I checked that's not a normal 'let's stand around and drink beer casually in the kitchen situation!'" Despite himself Dean downed half the bottle in one go. "Fuck Bobby!"

"Would you calm down?" Sam sneered at his brother.

Dean glared at Sam affronted. "Would YOU calm down?"

"I am calm!"

Dean took a shuttering breath and refocused on the silent hunter who was looking at the recipe in his hand absently. "Did you make another deal Bobby? What's happened?"

"Look, I ain't been making deals." Bobby seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. "Things have just been a bit different around here recently. It isn't anything I can't handle." At the stunned look on Dean's face he added hastily, "No one was hurt." Well, besides the hound, but he wisely kept that thought to himself.

"No one was- no one was HURT? Did you not see what that thing did to my baby?" Dean put his hands on his head exasperatedly and zoned for a second. "Oh my fuck, my car... She makes it through the fucking apocalypse, but not through coming to Bobby's…"

"Oh, quit yer bitching. You can fix her up right here. She needed a new coat of paint last I saw anyway." Bobby took a swig, suddenly authoritative. "Weren't yah planning on staying anyhow?"

Sam risked a glance at the ceiling and looked downright uncomfortable. Dean just looked dazed.

"That's what I thought."

"But-" Bobby cut Sam off with a look.

"I'll explain more later… Now, do either of you Idjits know how to make a pizza?"

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tbc