Bergamot & Sulphur
Chapter 23: Lapsang Souchong
The bright, airy tea shop offers a quiet place of intimacy and unattended communion. A cascade of teas in glass canisters and stately tins line slate-grey shelves that stretch across whole walls and wherever the alcoved windows give way. Wooden floorboards creak amenably with distant footsteps, and the rhythmic purrs of the teashop cat, asleep in a basket in the corner, cocoon Crowley and his companion in appreciation of others' absence. Curled up in the comfort of a friendship comprised of incomparable compassion and implicit understanding, Crowley lifts the comforting weight of the pudged white pot, and pours tea.
The sweet, smoky aroma of fine tobacco and barrel-aged bourbon rises in a brothy brume from the spout of the pot. The young woman raises her brimming cup, sniffs at it. Unfamiliar with human anatomy, her motions are overly-articulated, tentative. The piquant tea appeals to her appetite, vanishes between bared teeth, the blush across her cheeks undoubtedly from the slight smolder and not embarrassment about a lack of social graces. Indulgent, she glances at Crowley for his approval, a canine challenge in the corners of her smile.
Out an alcoved window and across the cobblestoned street, the Winchesters are conversing with their unwheeled woman of chrome. An autumnal walk in a historic New England town; an apprentice witch's anthropomorphic spell gone awry; this accidental humanization; an antidote being crafted by an apologetic coven. Until then, an afternoon of commiseration and cups of Lapsang Souchong tea. Reaching across the table, Juliet nudges at his knuckles with her fingertips – an inquiry, a comforting, familiar gesture between them.
The toothsome, robust tea is reassuring to a Hellhound who rapturously scarfs down charred meats and savors the scorch of hot coals. To the former demon, the taste of smoke is too reminiscent of Hell, bitter and unwelcome. But for Juliet's sake, Crowley chokes it down without complaint. Without Juliet, Crowley would be alone in his apostasy, the lone damned and damaged soul attempting to redeem those wrongly dehumanized by a world unconscious and inconsiderate of their crucibles and consecrations. Drinking this single cup of tea is a small thing in comparison.
Slowly, the saporous wisps of smoke-scented tea and the solitude of the tearoom entwine around the two friends, and the afternoon eases into endless tranquility.
While Juliet was introduced in the canon in 9.21 "King of the Damn," she is almost entirely crafted from the kaleidoscopic, mirthful talents of the fandom. She has become the friend Crowley very much deserved, gifting him - and us - with someone capable and willing of reciprocating his affection. And in a fic about the people in his life Crowley loves and enjoys sharing a cuppa with, Juliet very much deserved her own chapter.