Welcome back. I'm glad everyone liked the last chapter. I hope this one meets expectations as well. This chapter is rated M. There is a bit of Italian in it and I used a translation app, so I greatly apologize if I have butchered the Italian language. Translations are at the bottom. Reviews are inspiration! Enjoy!

I do not own Supernatural…and I never will.

Daydream Believers

Heather was cornered in the kitchen.

She'd been quietly moving about the bunker for the past three days, hoping to stay under Sam's radar, but she knew it wouldn't last forever. It seemed that Sam had finally had enough of her avoidance.

As she stood at the stove waiting for water to boil, Heather was again wrapped up in the ghost of Crowley's arms, while Sam had already called her name twice and made his way toward her as one would a skittish animal.

"Heather!"

She jumped so hard the handle of the pot caught her flailing hand and flipped down the front of the stove. Heather had escaped being scalded by the hot water thanks to honed reflexes, but the inside of her wrist had caught the bottom of the pot as it had catapulted from the burner. She hissed, reaching for the spigot and sighing at the relief of cold water cascading over her blistering skin.

Sam was not idle. He had readily grabbed one of the first aid kits Dean had smartly stashed at varying points all over the bunker. He was prepared with burn cream and gauze the moment Heather shut off the water to better examine the burn.

"Here, let me." Sam was so kind, sometimes it made Heather's heart hurt a little bit. Especially when she could barely look him in the eyes for the guilt that ate away at her.

She placed her care into Sam's capable hands and just watched the strong, sure movements of his fingers as he worked. He appeared completely absorbed in the task.

She frowned at her own jealous longing to be so occupied. No matter how she had tried to divert her mind, it seemed that nothing could keep it long distracted. Memories didn't care if she was washing a dish, adding to her journal, or, apparently, making soup…Crowley was always prowling in the background, waiting to step into the spotlight. It was beyond infuriating, and at the same time, they were the only moments of peace she had known for the last three days; the only times all of the hurt simply vanished. But Crowley was pain. He was a demon who caused pain, reveled in pain, and at the moment, was the source of most of Heather's emotional and mental pain. The paradox made her vision blur.

She realized Sam had been talking as she slowly came out of her self-deprecating reveries. She needed to snap out of it; she wasn't the sort to woolgather, so it was a red herring for wandering thoughts to become visible in her actions.

"…but you looked kind of…Heather?"

Heather's focus cleared and she met the troubled brown eyes of the one person to whom she hardly ever lied. Sam was her judgment free zone.

"I had sex with Crowley." She hadn't meant to blurt it out so casually, not really. But, it was out there, and Sam didn't even look stunned.

He looked livid.

The medical tape Sam had been about to secure to the bandage, fluttered from his fingers like a useless malted feather. His lips pursed and nose began to twitch as he drew in deep, controlled breaths. Heather could see Sam's muscles shifting into the intimidating defensive stance that was so natural to the Winchesters. He backed away from Heather, leaving her to pale in anxiety as he continued to react in a manner that was, by her, wholly unexpected. He turned away and looked to be leaving the kitchen when he suddenly whirled around and planted his massive form in the doorway.

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!"

"I..."

"You fucked…CROWLEY?! You let him…"

"Sam please, you're scaring me." She realized the mistake a second too late.

"I'm scaring you? Me?" Sam stared her down with enough force that she backed up a step.

She often forgot that Sam could be as frightening as Dean, if not more so.

"Sam…"

"You let that…fucking demon touch you, but you're afraid of me." Nothing about his toned indicated he was asking a question.

"No! I'm not afraid of you, Sam. But, I…you're reacting like…" Heather was adamantly calm, but still losing what little grip she'd had on the conversation to start.

"Like what Heather?! How am I reacting? Like someone I care about willing slept with a demon, and not just any demon, but Crowley? I mean, Jesus Christ, the dreams I saw…" Sam brought his hands up and pulled the hair back from his forehead, linking his fingers together like he was trying keep is head from flying off his neck. "I guess at least I know he didn't rape you!"

Heather cringed hard at the jab, but not as hard as when Castiel suddenly appeared in the doorway behind the seething Winchester.

"Sam, Heather…what's going on?"

"Oh good Cas, you're here. Heather was just telling me that she and Crowley were having sex while Dean and Gadreel went on living my life." Sam continued his uncharacteristic sarcasm.

Cas looked to Heather.

She tried to meet the angel's eyes but could barely see through the tears of humiliation and shame that had gathered to smear her vision.

Cas stayed silent as Heather looked away, and he looked back to Sam.

"I know." Cas sounded as though he could have been acknowledging that they sky is blue.

The angel's eyes moved to peer from their corners as one side of his mouth curled up in a small smile of understanding. Heather couldn't hold back the grateful hum that squeezed through her tear chocked throat.

Before Sam's major bitch-scoff could become a full blown tantrum, Castiel inserted himself into the distance between his two hunter friends.

"Cas! You already knew…"

Cas spoke calmly but firmly over Sam's ranting. "Yes Sam. Dean informed me. He and I discussed it, and decided that Heather was more than capable of making her own decisions. And as long as she didn't attempt to assist Crowley in escaping, or exhibit any signs that Crowley had harmed her, we decided to stay out of it until she asked for our assistance."

Heather was no less bemused than Sam to learn about the conversation. She knew Dean was aware of the extent to which her interactions with Crowley had progressed, and it was only wise to assume if Dean knew, then Cas did as well. She had even suspected, rightly so, that it would concern them enough to create discussion on a course of action, should they need to intervene. What she had not expected to hear, was that they had trusted she'd be able to handle herself. That kind of faith, coming from Dean, filled in a tiny portion of the emptiness that had grown over the past few days.

"Dean would never…" Sam shook his head. "Right, so it's fine then. Nothing to worry about." Sam was a little less tense, but no less angry.

Castiel turned and gave Heather a falsely confident look. "Crowley is no longer a prisoner in this bunker. He cannot enter unless he is accompanied, or summoned…"

"Exactly Cas!" Sam's arm shot out in front of him, his fingers pushed together to point accusingly at Heather, who was still too stunned to move. "If you and Dean knew she was fucking Crowley, then you know that she's been playing around with witch craft! She used it on Kevin. Who's to say she won't summon Crowley in the middle of the night for a god damn booty call?"

"I don't see the need for vulgarity but…"

Heather was suddenly frothing with indignant outrage, but still too shaken to bite out little else than the basest of insults. "Go fuck yourself Sam Winchester."

Sam, his eye twitching with the effort to hold back, shook his head again and scowled before abruptly turning and striding from the kitchen.

For a few seconds, Heather scrutinized the empty space he'd left behind, trying to determine if she still wanted to cry, or break something. She looked down at the gauze slowly unraveling from her wrist. Masculine fingers were suddenly at the task that Sam had abandoned. Heather observed their tender work as Cas' deeply intoned voice rumbled softly to her ears.

"He misses Dean."

Heather huffed with little energy. "He's angry at Dean. And I pushed him over the edge, it would seem."

"Yes." Cas ripped new medical tape from the roll. "Still, he should not have reacted like that. I'm actually a bit concerned." Cas secured the tape into place and vanished his hands from her field of sight.

"Don't be." She reached up and encircled her right hand around the injured and wrapped left wrist. "He's in pain. People do strange things when they're in pain."

Cas tilted his head without saying the words that were so plainly written on his face.

Heather looked up and gave him a wry smile. "Don't worry about me Cas. I'm good. You and Dean trusted me before, yeah? Well, don't stop now, ok?"

Cas nodded with a deep breath, and lately familiar frown, before he turned and slowly walked out.

Heather looked back down and squeezed her wrist over where she knew the burn to be, as Sam's booming voice echoed in her subconscious. Suddenly, physical pain didn't seem as distressing as it once had.

XxXxX

Of all the words in his self-proclaimed tremendous vocabulary, antsy was the only word he could come up with to describe how he'd felt in the past week.

Crowley had escaped team free will to go on the run from Abbadon, but he didn't want to seem like he was hiding. So, he'd taken residence in a sweet little villa in southern Greece; once having belonged to the eviscerated dead man in the closet.

It had taken five days for the man to die of continued blood loss, but Crowley wasn't overly concerned with the corpse. After two nights in a row of disturbing dreams; ones that replayed Cain's words as he found himself brutally fucking Heather on a blood soaked carpet; he forwent rest, as all demons were capable of doing. But the dreams didn't go away; they morphed into daytime fancies of the most embarrassing kind. Being called out of a daydream by knocking at his office door, only to find he had a very visible and unfulfilled erection, was on his never-to-do-again list.

That humiliating moment had taken place two days before, when his blood supply had still been half full. He didn't trust another demon with the task of finding him a replacement, but he wasn't exactly able to wander about without drawing some sort of demonic attention.

Abbadon had all her feelers out. She knew exactly where he was, where he went, and what he did when he got there, if he wasn't very careful. No chance it would go unreported if he went out, plucked up a random human, and zapped them back to the villa.

The incessant tapping of his finger ceased against the arm rest of an antique Empire settee, and a smile dragged across his face as a flamboyant doorbell sang through the halls of the villa.

The woman on the other side of the door smirked coyly and bid him a good evening in flowing Italian. The black tweed and lace Chanel dress she wore was a testament to how expensive and talented Grecian call girls could be. She had long wavy brown hair that brushed the side of her breast as it was swept seductively to the left. Her eyes were unfortunately brown, but she was busty and curvy, and short enough to be considered petite. Her skin was much too tan, lips too thin, and voice on the wrong side of husky, but the service had matched his requests in as many aspects as they could. The woman before him was absolutely striking; but she was still the wrong woman.

Earlier in the day, before the sun had begun its plunge toward the mountainous horizon, Crowley had decided to believe that Cain's intention had been to distract him from the hunt; from skewering Abbadon. The first Knight had become a lonely, sad, pathetic, suicidal excuse for a demon. Things may have become a bit more hectic than anticipated, but Crowley had by no means given up on his life, as Cain seemed to have done. Any wisdom the original first born son had to impart was meant for the ears of someone who had nothing left to fight for, and that wasn't Crowley. He would take back his kingdom because it was worth the battle; not some pitiable human whose life would be over in less than 70 years; a ridiculous girl who was too observant for her own good; the woman with eyes so kind and understanding, it felt like she wrapped you in the warmth and light of her soul every time she looked at you…

"Mr. Crowley?" The call girl's heavily accented voice snuck up on him, though she sounded as though she had repeated his name at least once before catching his attention.

"Yes," he smirked, "come in, please." He extended his hand to her, in which she settled her fingers as he led her over the threshold with exaggerated manners.

She smiled demurely and cunningly took in the expensive surroundings. Crowley admired her from the back, as he inquired about her name.

"Puoi chiamarmi Violet." She extended her hand for him to kiss in greeting.

He smiled at the hand and imagined what it would look like once it was dangling in chains hanging from the clothes bar of the closet. He was suddenly very glad he had moved the former owners' corpse to the basement before making the phone call.

The woman almost faltered, her instincts perhaps telling her that she wasn't in a good situation, before Crowley finally took hold of her hand and laid a gentle kiss to the curve of her middle knuckle.

"E 'un piacere conoscerti Violet. Avete, per caso, parli inglese?"

"Si. I also speak French, Japanese, and Russian." She smiled and slid her fingers along his as her hand fell back to rest against her shapely hip.

"Mmm, a woman of the world." Crowley leered at her as she smiled and licked her lips.

"People come from all over the world to wonder at the beauty of my country. It is best to be prepared for any situation." She winked.

Crowley couldn't help the chuckle that escaped him, nor argue with the thought that the poor woman had walked into a situation for which she could never have been prepared.

XxXxX

The next morning Crowley awoke to crusty eyes, sandpaper tongue, an ominously sticky groin region, and what would have been a pounding headache, had he been human. As it was, no matter what he wanted to call it, it still felt like John Bonham was playing Stairway to Heaven, using his skull as the bass drum.

There was a faintly distressed weeping, muffled by the closet door, which pecked at the pulsating vein in his temple as the crying grew more shrill. Crowley glanced over to the closed door and squeezed his eyes shut against the noise, only to have an image of the terrified half naked woman's face spear through his mind.

His fingertips brushed lightly against the plunger of an empty, used syringe. Despite the epic song being played against his head, he sat up clutching the needle, swung his legs out of bed and lumbered toward the closet, ripping the door open hard enough for the hinges to exhale a worrying creak.

The woman shrieked through her gag and tried to scoot away from Crowley, who froze as he suddenly realized how out of his mind he must have looked; how absolutely rabidly insane the prostitute, Violet, must have assumed him to be. Even if physically he was still holding it together, his eyes raged with emotion.

He would have been afraid of him.

Crowley dropped the still empty needle and waved his hand, vanishing the chains and gag from the terrified woman.

"Go." He croaked, holding his arm out and pointing toward the open bedroom door.

Violet didn't need to be told twice. She scrambled to her stiletto-ed feet and dashed for the door, about to turn the corner and gain her freedom when she heard a loud crack, like a tree branch breaking.

Crowley decided perhaps it wasn't such a brilliant idea to allow some random human to run around with the information that he'd been keeping human pets in order to inject their blood. He'd lifted his hand and twisted it at the wrist, instantly snapping Violet's neck.

As Crowley rolled her body into position to zap to the basement, he brushed the hair from her face and thought that she didn't look so much like Heather after all. Her blood hadn't even been that great of a substitute for the sweetness of humanity. Violet, obviously, had not been one for the confessional. But the experience taught him something important; nothing could stand in for the purity of Heather's company.

Cain's words suddenly sounded more right than they ever had wrong. Crowley was going about it backwards. Pushing Heather away was only weakening him during a time when he needed to be at his strongest. But if she was with him, then he could clear his mind and work on pulling his kingdom back together and having done with the world's angriest ginger. It was a simple enough plan, and he would follow through…even if he had to kidnap Heather to do it.

Author's Note:

Italian: Puoi chiamarmi Violet-You may call me Violet

E 'un piacere conoscerti Violet. Avete, per caso, parli inglese-It is a pleasure to meet you Violet. Do you, by chance, speak English.