Thanks to the encouragement I received, and a recent episode of Supernatural that I will not discuss so as to avoid spoilers but that gave me serious Meg-feels, I've decided to make this a two-shot.
Some girls could try on clothes for hours, cover their floor in discarded outfits, and still be dissatisfied at the end of the whole ordeal. For Meg, the problem extended far beyond clothes. Before she ever had to think about what to wear, she needed to decide on whom to wear.
And in a state as big and diverse as Texas, that meant an awful lot of bodies to choose from.
Meg stared at herself—or the meat-suit she was wearing—in the mirror of a dingy truck-stop bathroom. This body wasn't so bad, just as long as Meg didn't mind going back to Hell and resuming an eternity of torture. Otherwise, the body quite frankly sucked. She needed to find and possess someone who owned more than skin-tight pink booty shorts, and she wasn't going to find that someone hanging out at a rest-stop on Interstate 10.
Disgusted, Meg punched the mirror, shattering the tanned-to-herpes-jerky reflection. She stomped out of the restroom and reentered the baking desert heat. Squinting against the sun, Meg surveyed the plaza and looked for a ride west, into Houston. Even if the body she inhabited was entirely unfit for the King of Hell, it would do when it came to attracting lonely truckers.
Five minutes and a little eyelash-batting later, Meg was seated in an air-conditioned cab with the first female trucker she'd ever met.
"Thanks for the ride," Meg said.
"I figured I'd better, if I didn't want to read about you in the obituaries," the trucker replied.
Meg snorted. "I can take care of myself. I know every girl that says that gets killed by some psychopath in the next scene, but I'm not every girl."
"Gonna stab 'em with your stiletto heels?"
"Only if I was in a bad mood. I'd probably just break their necks or drop them off a bridge."
The trucker laughed. "I guess you can take care of yourself. Is that why you're going to Houston, to prove how independent you are?"
"Nope, just the opposite. To prove how loyal I am to a man."
"Husband, boyfriend? You mind me asking?"
"Ask away. And he's neither of those things. He couldn't get any further from those things if he was on one side of the universe and they were on the other. I just have sex with him on deserted country roads," Meg said.
The trucker's eyebrows shot up. "Must be pretty good sex, to get you hitchhiking to see him."
"That is not okay to ask about. He may kiss and tell—son of a bitch, does he ever—but I've got class. My father taught me better. …But it was pretty good. Not that I'd tell him that. If he ever asked, I'd say it was horrible and I faked everything."
Two hours and much commiserating later, Meg and the truck driver parted ways at a gas station in Houston. Meg sauntered into the gas station's minimart and found it deserted except for the cashier. Meg sized up the cashier and decided Crowley would probably be happier if she came to him wearing a dog.
Meg didn't know how many people lived in Houston, but somewhere out there was a suitable meat-suit. She just had to find it. And she wasn't going to find it by staring at the slushy machine in a crappy minimart. Meg broke her eyes away from the spinning drums of blue and red flavored ice and continued her quest.
It was almost three in the afternoon, and people would soon start flooding out of downtown skyscrapers and office buildings. Meg decided that would be the most logical place to start looking for a better body, and also the most logical place to find Crowley. The King of Hell didn't show up personally to make deals with small businesses. If Crowley was here, he'd be kissing up some energy giant's vice president. Meg just hoped she found a new look before she found Crowley.
Meg's current body wore shorts too tight to admit pockets, but that didn't mean she had no place to put her money. Her bra served as her wallet, and contained both a driver's license and thirty-two dollars. Meg withdrew enough money for bus fare and hopped aboard glorious public transport for the journey downtown.
The bus, like the gas station, failed to provide a meat-suit and Meg hopped off still wearing the truck stop hooker. She was beginning to feel dirty and diseased.
Now that she was in the right area, Meg began to actively seek a new meat-suit. She wasn't sure exactly what she was looking her—only that, as per Crowley's request, it not be covered in spots of any kind—but she'd know it when she saw it.
As Meg wandered around, the first trickle of freed office workers joined her on the sidewalk. Some of them openly stared at her and her scandalous outfit, and more than one person crossed the street to avoid her. Meg scoffed. If these people would run from a perfectly normal prostitute, she could only imagine how fast they'd scatter if she showed them her black eyes. Maybe just once… No, she was here to make Crowley happy, and she wasn't going to blow her chances of keeping on his good side just to screw around with a bunch of uptight drones.
Meg kept her demonic tendencies in check and surveyed the growing rush-hour throng that walked with her. She rejected meat-suit after meat-suit for a variety of reasons. One caught her eye—a tall woman who screamed dominatrix even in a conservative business suit—but before Meg could approach the woman, she got into a car parked at a meter.
"Come on!" Meg growled. There had to be some person in this town who didn't look cheap, weak, generic, or like a wannabe cowboy or hipster.
Meg waded through the tide of collared shirts and monochromatic ties, looking for anything that stuck out. Finally she found it. And as a bonus, her chosen target presented the opportunity for all kinds of bondage games. Crowley would be thrilled.
Like a lion, Meg stalked her prey. Then, very much unlike the lion, she threw herself against the window of her prey's patrol car and began to sob hysterically.
The window rolled down a crack, and judging by the way the car's occupant moved his hand to his belt, he suspected he was about to need his pepper-spray. Meg stopped pawing at the window and collapsed in a heap on the sidewalk. Her short shorts rode up even higher and probably could have earned her an indecent exposure citation.
"Ma'am, do you need help?" the cop asked from inside the safety of his squad car.
"Yes!" Meg bawled. "My boyfriend's OD'ing or something!"
"Okay, calm down. It'll be alright. Where is he?" Exactly as Meg had predicted, the cop's instinct to protect and serve kicked on and his revulsion and fear at the howling hooker were no match for his desire to do good.
The cop radioed for an ambulance and then opened the door and stepped out. Meg, her mascara running down her face in rivulets, grabbed him by the hand and yanked him. The crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle parted to allow Meg and the cop passage. Once Meg and the cop were sprinting down the sidewalk, most of the crowd milled on its way, though a few stuck around to gossip and decry the sorry state of today's misled youth.
Meg needed somewhere quiet where half of Texas wouldn't see her smoke out of her current body, and she needed it before the cop became suspicious of her story. The area was far too nice to have trash-strewn alleys or flophouses, but the bathroom of a coffeehouse might be dingy enough. Meg pulled the cop through the doors of the nearest Starbucks and then guided him into the men's bathroom, which was mercifully empty of witnesses.
"Where's your boyfriend?" the cop asked, surveying the empty stalls.
Meg waited for the bathroom door to swing shut entirely before throwing back her head. The cop leapt away and stared with wide thunderstruck eyes as a black cloud billowed from the woman's mouth. Before he could bolt for the door, the malevolent cloud forced itself down his throat.
Meg's former meat-suit collapsed in a boneless heap. Its original owner was still alive, just traumatized into a catatonic state. It was probably only temporary. Probably. Either way, Meg was done with the not-so-happy hooker.
But Officer Friendly on the other hand, Meg really wanted to get to know him. She looked at herself in the mirror above the sink, and knew she'd chosen wisely. This meat-suit was perfect: authoritarian, handsome, and he had a gun. And handcuffs. And a Taser! Meg could imagine the fun she and Crowley would get up to with all the cop's gadgets.
Crowley.
Meg stopped daydreaming about BDSM and faced reality. She still had no idea where Crowley was, and Houston wasn't exactly a ghost town. If she didn't find him before he pranced off to Hell, he'd no doubt blame her for never showing up, and then back into the deep fryer she'd go.
"The little weasel," Meg muttered. She'd find him, alright. And when she did, she was going to…do everything in her power to please him.
God, her life was in shambles.
Stepping over her former meat-suit, which was now stirring and moaning, Meg exited the bathroom. Two customers and a barista who had seen her run in a few minutes ago now watched her either blatantly, in the case of the barista, or covertly, in the case of the customers: one of them peeked over her newspaper, and the other pretended to be typing the next great American novel, though his fingers were obviously hitting the same key over and over again.
Meg managed what she hoped was an embarrassed, awkward laugh. "Uh, for future reference, a blocked toilet is not a police emergency. Not even if you had bad Tex-Mex and are suffering the consequences."
The barista snorted and the novelist chuckled. The newspaper reader muttered, "Ew, way too much information," and returned to the Business section.
Satisfied that everyone's suspicions had been alleviated—and hoping the threat of explosive gastrointestinal distress would keep them out of the bathroom for a while—Meg hurried out the door. She made it nearly to the end of the block before a ridiculous thought struck her. She almost ignored it, almost being the imperative word, but ended up bowing to the impulse.
Hardly able to believe what she was doing, Meg turned around and reentered the coffeehouse. The patronage and barista on duty hadn't changed in the three minutes she'd been gone, and again all sets of eyes turned to look at her. This time the woman with the newspaper didn't even bother raising her shield.
"This is going to sound really weird, but if you wanted to find a demon somewhere in this city, where would you look?" Meg asked.
The replies were instantaneous and unanimous. "Halliburton."
"Thanks." As Meg ran back outside, she smacked herself in the forehead. Talk about missing the obvious.
One of the great advantages to wearing a cop—besides the utility belt that was second only to Batman's—was the sweet wheels. Meg got behind the wheel of the ill-gotten vehicle and did a quick rundown of all the accessories by accessing the meat-suit's memories. As though she'd known how to do it her whole life, Meg picked up the radio and, again using the sheepish laugh she'd utilized earlier to disarming effect, told dispatch to cancel the ambulance. Bad burritos had struck again.
Once that little nuisance was taken care of, Meg again probed her meat-suit's memories. That was another convenient thing about cops: they had the proverbial memories of elephants. Officer Friendly had an excellent map of Houston in his head from years of street patrols, and knew exactly where Halliburton's offices were. Apparently, in the Bush years, Officer Friendly had, on more than once occasion, been called to remove protesters from the premises.
With her destination plugged into her organic GPS, Meg buckled her seatbelt—she had to set a good example for the citizenry—and shifted the car into drive. The swelling rush-hour traffic wasn't eager to let her join the stream, so she did what everyone riding in a police car fantasized about: she activated the sirens and light bar, and peeled out.
The sirens and lights cleared a path as effectively as a snowplow, and Meg, for the first time in a very long time, felt powerful. She was in charge, she had a badge and a badass ride, and people got out of her way. Sure, the body and the badge and the car were all borrowed, but the rush was hers and hers alone.
A few blocks from her destination, Meg killed the light-and-sound show. She wanted to surprise Crowley, and blaring her presence at a hundred decibels wasn't going to leave much room for ambush.
Meg slowed down and surveyed the office building. It didn't exactly look like an evil lair, though the most evil of evil lairs rarely did. Crowley's office, for instance, had inviting mahogany furniture and not a thumb-screw or motivational cat poster to be seen.
Meg completed her reconnaissance and parked within sight of the building's main entrance, but far enough away not to be immediately spotted. Then she settled in for a stake-out.
She waited.
And she waited.
And she played with her handcuffs.
And she found Officer Friendly's spiral-bound notepad, usually used for taking witness statements and documenting crimes. And she played hangman with herself and won. And she drew some ultra-violent doodles, many of which involved some combination of herself, Crowley, the Winchesters, and Castiel. One particularly naughty doodle involved all five of them together. Meg tore this one out, folded it, and placed it in her breast pocket for safekeeping.
People filed out of the building in starts and stops. Many of them were in suits, but none of them was Crowley. Meg groaned in frustration as a pudgy white male walked out. He might have passed for Crowley…if not for Stetson hat.
Two hours trickled by. The building emptied of all its regular diurnal employees, and as day faded into evening, even the cleaning crew cleared out. Only a few office windows stayed lit, and it was in those lights that Meg placed all her hope.
By the time the clocks struck nine, Officer Friendly—known to every government entity, family member, friend, and coworker as Alvaro Constantino—was missed both at home and at work. His shift should have ended hours ago, and he was getting increasingly urgent calls from dispatch, asking him to at least report his current location. Meg, already pissed off, wasn't in the mood for any more noise. She glared at the radio and it erupted in a shower of sparks.
In the afterglow of the murdered radio, Meg spied a lone figure strolling through the front doors of the office building. She squinted and her heart kicked.
Freaking finally!
She had to act quickly. Crowley could disappear at any moment. Or he could saunter around downtown, savor the night air, and find himself an orphan to kick or a transvestite to pick up. Meg had no idea what Crowley's plans were, as the devious bastard hadn't been nice enough to let her in on any of them.
Meg exited the car and headed towards Crowley at a trot. She was careful to avoid his line of sight, and snuck up from behind. She had a notion her meat-suit had done this sort of stalking before, as the body moved easily and silently. When she was within twenty feet, she transferred the handcuffs from her belt to her hands. Once the cuffs were positioned correctly, Meg prepared to sprint the final distance and have Crowley manacled before he even realized he'd been followed.
"I know you're there, darling, and whatever it is you're planning, you'd better reconsider."
That stopped Meg in her tracks as effectively as a concrete barrier.
"The only reason you aren't already a smoldering pile of offal is that I am in an excellent mood. So don't ruin it."
Meg swallowed hard and weighed her choices. Maybe it would be smartest to reveal her hand. She didn't want to be a smoldering pile of offal, after all.
"You're under arrest!" Meg blurted out instead.
Now it was Crowley's turn to stop. He paused for a few seconds, and then turned around. He appraised the cop and cocked an eyebrow.
"Am I now? On what charges?"
"Murder, torture, arson, kidnapping, vandalism, slander—"
"It's only slander if it's untrue," Crowley interrupted. "And everything I said about your father—except maybe the furry bit, but I haven't given up hope—is true."
Meg's shoulders sunk. "You knew it was me?"
"Of course. Though," Crowley ran his eyes up and down Meg's meat-suit, "I like what I see. You have something approaching taste after all."
Meg tried not to look too relieved. "I hoped you'd like it. Its name is Alvaro."
Crowley smirked. "Exotic. Not exactly Castiel but much better than, say, Meg."
"Or Fergus," Meg muttered.
"And, of course, nowhere near as exotic as the names your father liked to be called when he and I—"
"Don't tell me about that! I'm sorry!"
Crowley's self-satisfied smile grew like the Grinch's heart. "You've got quite a lot to be sorry for, haven't you?"
Meg knew this was coming; it was why she was here, after all. To make penance. "Yes."
"And what is it you owe me for again? Hmm? One dead hellhound, one sullied angel, and one betrayal. My, my, that's quite the tab."
"I know. But I'm here, just like you wanted. So can we get on with it? What do I have to do before you forgive me?"
"Oh, I still haven't decided. Meet me in Saint Louis on Sunday and I'm sure I'll have made up my mind."
Meg's mouth fell open. Then a whole bunch of curse words tumbled from it. "You leprechaun bastard! I spent all day hitchhiking, wearing hookers, and pretending people had diarrhea! I am not chasing you around the country!"
"What choice do you have?" Crowley asked.
Later, she would chalk it up to her meat-suit's training. At the moment it happened, though, there was no room for thought. Meg pulled the Taser from her belt, aimed it at Crowley, and zapped the King of Hell with 50,000 volts.
Which hardly made him twitch. Apparently electric attacks weren't very effective against Crowley. Nonchalantly, as though brushing away a speck, Crowley swept the Taser's twin electrodes from his chest.
"Make that a dead hellhound, a sullied angel, a betrayal, and police brutality."
Meg threw the Taser to the ground. "I'll show you police brutality."
"Mm, if that's a promise, that might be enough to pay for the angel."
Meg pulled out the handcuffs again.
"And maybe, just maybe, for my pup as well."
The End
Though I would not be adverse to a third chapter.
Also, if any reader happens to be from Houston, I hope I was vague enough with geography...