A/N: My hand to god, I swear I'm going to stop with the author's note before every chapter but I feel obligated to point out that now that the fic's storyline is going to merge up with the actual Supernatural episodes/storyline that things are going to go into a bit of an AU.

Present Day...

"The bloody obnoxious thing in all this," Crowley growled as we stood at his desk, staring down at the map laid out before us, "is that I had the damn little god-interpreter in my hands not that long ago."

Picking up my Jamba Juice from the desk, I knew my face looked as shocked as I felt. A prophet was valuable, to say the least, even if you weren't the King of Hell and running all over creation trying to get inside God's head. "And you didn't keep him?" I asked incredulously, managing to get the words out around my straw. Awww… Strawberry Surfrider. A demon named Harold had brought it to me about three minutes after I'd grumbled about wishing I'd grabbed one before we'd descended from topside. Room service in Hell… it was something I could definitely get used to.

Crowley dropped into the chair behind the desk in a graceful flop that I was 100% certain that no one else could ever quite replicate – if only because I was 99% certain that he had spent time practicing it. Likely in front of a mirror. "Believe me, I tried," he muttered, digging around in the bottom drawer and pulling out a bottle of Craig. "Drink, love?" I shook my head and held up my Jamba.

"Maybe later."

He shrugged eloquently and poured himself a couple fingers, downing it in a single shot before pouring another which he sipped at more carefully. "Prophets are slippery things to begin with," he growled, tapping his fingers on the desk. "Even more so with His Righteousness and Feathers mucking around."

Ah, a Winchester. The bane of everything in the supernatural world. "You ever going to deal with them?" I asked as I traced my fingers around the burned edges of the map. Once it had depicted all of North and Central America. Now, with the edges reduced to cinders, only the continental United States and thin slip of northern Mexico remained. It was as far as the spell could trace the prophet – an honor student named Kevin who, according to Crowley, was fifty percent balls and fifty percent nervous wreck – which meant he was warding like a sonofabitch. Not that I blamed him, if their roles were reversed I'd have been doing the same damn thing. Still, there was always a bit of a letdown when you realized things weren't going to be easy.

Crowley snorted into his liquor. "No. I'm not. Those boys don't know how to stay dead and I'd be bloody stupid to want to be the one they came gunning for once they came back. Plus," he scowled, "their pet angel has my bones."

It was my turn to scowl, my face folding into something unpleasant. A demon's bones… they were their kryptonite. More than salt, more than Holy Water, more than a goddamn exorcism. I did not like it that anyone had such a hold over the King of Hell, even if they weren't actively abusing it. I made a small mental note. Something needed to be done about that.

Crowley sighed and went back to staring at the map. "We have an uneasy… truce, of sorts. It's a fine line to walk between being me…" he waved his hand at the office around him, "and being just charming and just useful enough that they don't feel the need to salt and burn my ass. On the bright side they do have the lovely habit of annihilating people that are in my way – Azazel, Lillith, Lucifer, Dick fucking Roman…" the rich gravel of his voice dissolved into a growl on the last name. I'd never had the privilege of meeting Dick Roman and, going by the images and emotions that flashed through my head, I should consider myself lucky on that front. "Come here."

I went, placing my free hand in his and letting him draw me around the desk and down into his lap. Something electric, all red smoke and silver light, jumped as we touched and closed the circuit between us. I felt a small sigh of relief slip out of my lips as I touched him, relieved of an ache that I hadn't even been aware of until it was gone.

We'd always been fairly tactile with each other but, if the last eighteen hours were anything to go by, things had gone up notch in that department as well. Crowley was as tactile as they came, a disposition that lent him a great amount of success in what he did. It was terribly hard to resist someone that embodied every dirty thought you'd ever head, every hidden desire you'd stashed in the depths of your heart. He was sex in a well-tailored suit. I imagined that most of his underlings thought it was a ploy; that he had turned his meat suit into a weapon designed to wheel in his prey. It was partially true, I was sure, but not completely. They didn't know what I knew: that Crowley had sold his soul for three more inches below the belt. Crowley liked to touch and be touched.

Me, not so much. Unless it was Crowley. For him I was very tactile, touching him frequently whenever we were together. My lodestone against nightmares of things long past.

For a moment we sat in silence, sipping away at our respective drinks and staring at the ruined map on the desk. Crowley's free hand was resting against my thigh, his fingers moving against my jean clad skin. It took me longer than I would like to admit to realize that he was drawing out the symbols and spells of warding that he thought it likely that Kevin would be using, from Enochian on down. It was another minute before I realized that I was doing the same, half a breath behind him, writing them with the drag of my fingertips through the short hair at the nape of his neck.

"Would he be with the Winchesters?" I asked after a moment, rolling the straw in my mouth as I thought. If he was… well, then things would nearly as simple as casting a locator spell. While the Winchesters could, and frequently did, drop off the map it was nigh impossible for them to disappear for any meaningful length of time. They were the bogeymen in the closet, the monsters under the proverbial bed for the supernatural. The cognizant of the supernatural – the demons, the shapeshifters, werewolves, vampires – those that retained the ability to think and communicate, they were always on the lookout for the denim duo.

"Long term? Unlikely," Crowley mused, tapping a finger against his glass. "Moose and Not Moose are too easy to track – a fact they're well aware of. They'll be in contact with him, most definitely, but they won't risk him by staying with him." He downed the rest of the Craig in a single swallow and scowled at the wall opposite. I followed his gaze, giggling as my eyes landed on his portrait – a massive thing nearly as tall as I was that portrayed Crowley in a military uniform, a swastika splashed across his breast. "Don't start that again," he muttered, squeezing my thigh.

I cleared my throat. "I'll try not to," I replied, still fighting down the laughter. When we had first arrived in his office after a brief tour of Hell I had taken one look at the Hitler-esque depiction and lost it, laughing until tears streamed down my face and I couldn't get any air into my lungs. "It's just so very… you," I added with a wave of my Jamba-filled hand. Despite the fact that I was sitting in his fucking lap I was strangely loathe to remove my hand from his hair.

"Thanks, darling," he drawled, smirking.

"There's got to be something else we can do," I murmured a moment later, my interest recaptured by the singed map. If I could have glared it into submission, into giving up its secrets, I would have by now. Easily. "There has to be another way," I growled. I hated waiting. I hated depending on others. I did my own dirty work, thank you fucking much.

"Easy, love." Crowley stroked me, soothing me like you would a skittish horse or a cat who was hissing at shadows, its fur all poofed to hell and back. "Patience."

"Not a virtue of mine," I bit out, trying very hard not to pout. I was better than pouting. So I was definitely not pouting. Much.

"Of which I am very, very aware," he purred, lips ghosting over the edge of my ear. "But I can think of quite a number of things to do while waiting for little Kevin to come out and reveal himself to us." I shivered, shuddering beneath his touch and was rewarded with a low, smoky chuckle. I let myself get lost in the feel of his mouth; in the way it moved down the curve of my neck, his teeth dragging against my skin. Somewhere in the lust-induced haze that Crowley cast over me – he was a drug, a damn drug and you'd never hear differently from anyone who had ever had him – his words caught up with me.

"Wait, what did you say?" I mumbled once I'd managed to pry my lips off his collarbone. When had they gotten there? When I had undone his tie? And his shirt? When had I put my Jamba Juice down on his desk? Of course, then the rest of my brain caught up and I wondered why the fuck I had opened my mouth to begin with. It was an idea, a fleeting ghost of a thought skirting around the edges of my consciousness, spurred into existence by my notorious lack of patience. It was probably nothing but if it wasn't… if it was something it might save us time. Or at least give me something to tinker with.

Crowley raised an eyebrow. "I said…"

"Yeah, I know what you said," I interrupted, covering his mouth with my fingers. I did my best to ignore the shiver that ran through me as he sucked a digit in between his lips, waiting for me to explain. "I just… what if we didn't have to find the prophet?" I mused out loud, eyes narrowed as I stared into his face. "What if the prophet found us?"

The King of Hell tipped his head to the side, suddenly looking quizzical as he let my finger fall from his mouth. "What do you mean, love?" He asked from behind my hand.

To be honest I wasn't entirely sure what I meant, but it was the spark of an idea and my brain took it and ran. I'd spent the last ten years of my life nosing through every piece of supernatural knowledge I could get my grubby little hands on. I'd managed to create a spell to bind a human to a demon as a familiar, surely I could… "All of his warding is protective," I breathed as the stray bit of wording tumbled into place. "He's keeping himself from being found."

Crowley nodded at the map. "I think we've established that, darling."

"Shh, I'm still making this shit up as I go," I growled, tapping his mouth. He shushed. "What if... what if instead of trying to find him, we made him find us?"

"May I speak?" Crowley asked, torn between interest and amusement as I rummaged through the top drawer of his desk until I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and a fountain pen that probably cost more than I wanted to know.

"Yes, yes," I waved a hand as I scrawled a few notes on the paper. I'd landed myself, almost literally, in my current position because I hadn't been afraid to start messing with magics that, theoretically, shouldn't have been combined. This… this shouldn't be all that difficult if I had the right resources. It would be much akin to calling water to you.

"What are you thinking? Accio prophet?"

I pursed my lips and stared at the scrawl of notes. "I'm thinking I need to look a little deeper into Africa. Or possibly aboriginal Australia. The magic systems, not the actual places," I added, feeling the tingle of gathering power trickle down my spine like droplets of ice water. "Wait, did you just make a Harry Potter reference?" Those beautiful hazel eyes widened ever so slightly above my hand – Crowley's halfhearted attempt at innocence. "Did you…?" I trailed off as he shook his head.

"Offered, but she turned me down. Very politely," he added, lips twitching against my hand. "Got published on her own a year later." Somehow I found that reassuring. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of people out there that did demon deals, a lot more than I would have thought. It was still nice to know that somewhere in the world there existed legitimate talent, that some people found their dreams without supernatural intervention.

I waved my hand, dismissing my wandering thoughts and pulling them back to the slip of an idea that kept trying to escape me. "Anyway, it could be nothing but I did manage to create something to bind me, to bind us," I rattled off, "This shouldn't be any more difficult. I've got something that might be an idea but I want to do some checking… but I think it's possible that I could worm my way past his wards and make him come out from behind them."

The grin that lit Crowley's face was breathtaking. Reaching around me he pressed a button on the phone – how the hell did Hell have a landline? – and called, "Harold?"

"Your majesty?" Harold's voice drifted through the speaker, the epitome of a willing drone.

Crowley's smile of approval dissolved into a more typical smirk, one that said he was thinking naughty things. "Is the apartment ready?"

Harold's response was immediate. "Yes my liege. It was finished an hour ago."

Crowley's smirk widened. "Excellent. I'm taking possession of it now."

"Yes, your majesty."

Crowley released the button and stood, tumbling me from his lap in a graceful movement that had me standing next to him, one of his hands curled around my hip to steady me, before I'd even realized what was happening. "This way," he ordered, watching me shove my hurriedly scribbled notes into my pocket.

"Coming, coming," I muttered. It wasn't like I could exactly fall behind, seeing as how he hadn't released the near bruising grip from my hip.

"Promises, promises," he smirked.

And we were back to sex. Thank god for Crowley.

"Now who's the one asking for more?" I teased archly.

The look Crowley gave me was blood boiling, toe curling, one hundred fucking percent pure sex. "Oh, darling, I've just begun to tap all the things I plan on doing to you.

I swallowed audibly, my mouth dry. "Promises, promises," I drawled. The bastard smirked.

He led me through a door at the back of the office and I stopped, stunned. Not even the iron grip curved around my hip and onto my ass could make me move. I opened my mouth and closed it several times before finally managing to ask, "Have you been watching Beauty and the Beast?"

"No, not recently," Crowley hummed, amused. For a moment I was torn between looking around me and processing the King of Hell's admission that he watched Disney movies, but eventually my surroundings won out.

It wasn't quite Beauty-and-the-Beast or Library of Congress big but it was still a big ass library. Multiple stories of book lined walls towered around me, the upper levels accessible by a series of ladders and iron catwalks. The miles of bibliophile porn were only broken by a massive fireplace, the area before it furnished with deep comfy chairs, a sofa large enough to double as a comfortable bed, and a thick rug. Further back, there was a conference table with a chandelier overhead that was more artwork than legitimate light source – though it was doing a bang up job at that as well.

I was pretty sure that I orgasmed on the spot.

"What… what are these?" I asked because even from my distant view point I could tell that these weren't your average books and this wasn't your average library. There was a prickling on the back of my neck that told me that if I walked over and pulled a tome from the shelves it wouldn't be Shakespeare or Dan Brown or even Twilight. That, and I was pretty sure that the objects in the case on the other side of the conference table were cuneiform.

Crowley smirked and rocked back on his heels, obviously pleased. "One of my pet projects: every grimoire from every witch in the last three hundred years. Well, nearly every grimoire," he amended. "Hunters have a bad habit of burning them when they get their bloody hands on them. Plus any other grimoires and documents of magical interest that I could get my hands on. After the whole apocalypse disaster I consolidated them in one place. Lilith, and even Lucifer, always did have a hard time understanding that knowledge is power."

Their loss, I thought, still lost in staring around me. I could spend years in this room and still not touch every volume it contained. Of course, thanks to my nifty new deal with the King of Hell I had an indefinite, possibly infinite number of years in which to explore to my heart's content.

"Lilith was a short-sighted bitch," I muttered.

"True, love, very true."

"If I'd known you'd had this I'd have bargained my way down here years ago." Hell, if I'd had a second soul to spend I'd have sold it for the chance to spend a decade in here.

"I'm glad someone appreciates it, but this isn't what all I wanted to show you. Don't worry, you can come back in a few minutes," he informed me dryly, lips twitching as I caressed one of the shelves in passing.

He led me to another door, this one over near the fireplace, and flung it open. "Go on," he urged, swatting me on the ass to get me moving.

I wasn't sure how much time I lost after stepping into the room beyond. Thirty seconds? A minute? Ten minutes? It was… I couldn't process. I could see and observe, intellectually my brain was cataloging everything it saw: the large, vaulted expanse with gleaming almost black hardwood floors, polished until they shone like a dark mirror. The kitchen area to the left a slightly odd hodgepodge of modern, rustic, and very traditional that somehow managed to work. The breakfast nook – I refused to call it a dining area because the worn wood table would, at most, seat four though there were only two chairs present – set next to a gleaming stainless steel island and lit by another work-of-art chandelier. The living area to the right trended more towards a mash up of rustic lodge and traditional with a large sectional and ottoman arranged before big screen tv, another fireplace over in the corner. It was cozy and warm, all done in reds, grays, and golds with dark wood and stone. I could even see the beginnings of an equally well furnished bedroom through a pair of French doors.

"That's the thing about hell – all the souls down here? All those artists and interior designers and bloody master craftsmen? They're not floating through some perfect memory or living out their greatest might-have-been. They're waiting on my whims, so when I say jump they are already in there air before they can ask How fucking high?" Crowley remarked, eyes on me as I moved through the room, fingers stroking over items as I passed them, trying to convince myself that what my mind saw was real. "So if I happen to stroll in one morning and tell them that I, their bloody king, ask them to create an apartment for you they do it. Instantly." I paused and looked at him.

"Why?"

Crowley shoved his hands into his pockets and prowled further into the room, ambling along until he stood in the very center. "You have your cottage in Louisiana and your loft in New York. I don't expect you to give those up. I understand, perhaps better than anyone, the need to have something outside of Hell but whatever it is that we are, that we have become…" He shrugged eloquently. "We need a place to figure it out. You need a place in Hell that's your own. I need for you to have a safe place. It will be keyed to you and to me – no one else will be able to enter."

I frowned, disliking the implication that I was some fragile flower in need of protecting. "I can take care of myself."

He smiled at me and leaned against the back of the sectional, a very dashing picture. "Oh, trust me, love, of that I am very well aware. You have spent ten years proving that to me again and again, but you're tied to me now. In a way you are me and I always look out for myself. It's just good business."

Now that I could believe. Crowley was nothing if not good business. It was a constant, something that could be counted on and it soothed back whatever shock had consumed me. It was like taking a deep breath after spending too long under water, deprived of air until it was almost too late. The apartment around me was suddenly real, sinking in past my eyeballs until I could really see it, appreciate it, feel it. It was everything that I loved. The heart and soul of every magazine picture, every department store display that I had ever seen and thought I like that; everything that had ever touched me, comforted me, made me feel safe was brought into existence in this room. I stopped at the side table and, as if lost in a dream, stretched out my fingers and stopped them just shy of the flickering flame. It was a candle: Cinnamon and Spice, just like the one that Crowley had left burning in my childhood apartment a decade ago.

Crowley's suit clad arm reached across my field of vision, his hand wrapping around my own. "Once, I offered to set you up like Trump's mistress in exchange for your soul. I figured that the mistress to the King of Hell deserved exactly what her heart envisioned."

"Is that what I am?" I asked carefully. "Your mistress?"

Crowley's mistress – I could live with that. Oh, I could most definitely live with that but I was curious what he would say. I knew what he was to me. He was everything. There was absolutely no doubt that without his interference I would have died on a cold park bench ten years ago, my name and life forgotten in the endless stream of existence. Since then he had drifted in and out of my life: savior, doctor, confidant, inspiration, friend, and lover. On my moral compass there was no up or down, no right or wrong. There was simply one point: loyalty to Crowley and everything either pointed to that or away from it.

The King of Hell was silent for a long moment. Were it not for the hand clasped around my own I would have thought that he had left, disappeared between one breath and the next. The slight squeak of his shoes against the polished floor told me that he was moving but it wasn't until I could feel the heat of his body up the line of my spine that I believed that he wasn't leaving. His other hand stroked down my arm, caressing my skin until he came to my hand, fingers snaking through my own.

"You are mine," he growled softly in my ear, the rich rasp of his voice making my entire body shudder, the blood in my veins jumping at the unspoken command. My every reaction a confirmation that he spoke nothing but gospel truth. "You have been mine since I first laid eyes on you: bedraggled and weary, hiding behind a piss poor office decoration. You have been mine since we stood in a coffee shop and you looked right through my meat suit and saw me for who I was, even though you had no bloody idea what that actually was. You are mine," he repeated firmly, his entire chest vibrating with the force of his words, "and you will be until we both cease to exist."

He left me there in the apartment that he had built for me, the unspoken dream of my unconsciousness that he had pulled into existence. Who knew that the King of Hell had meetings? I didn't. Apparently things had become less murder-y and more paper work-y since Crowley had gained the throne. Unsurprising, once I stopped to think about it. It was just good business.

His library was calling to me: an unrelenting siren song of knowledge that could be manipulated and put to work luring the prophet out from wherever he was hiding. We had a god tablet and no way to read it. The way things were going in the world outside made that a weakness, a blind spot. We couldn't afford to be blind.

There were things I needed to do, things that would help Crowley.

Instead I gave myself five minutes and sat curled in the corner of the sectional, wrapped in Crowley's suit jacket, and let a single, solitary tear of relief slip down my face.

Author's Note: Chapter title from "Who Says You Can't Go Home" by Bon Jovi featuring Jennifer Nettles