At The Crossroads
.
Coffee shop AU? I think I'd prefer canon-divergent and in a pub, thanks.
Thank you to the talented artist, Piierogis, who produced a wonderful piece of fan art for At The Crossroads, as part of the 2021 Crowley Big Bang. Be sure to visit their Tumblr blog ( .com) to see the fic and banner art, and leave comments for them after reading – and hopefully enjoying – this fic.
.
The Crossroads sits on the corner of two Kansas backroads. Neither road leads to much of anywhere, except to where the two cross before going their separate ways. Which seems fitting, given the lives of the sort of people that frequent it.
The place is a proper pub, with a dark, open interior, a wide communal fireplace against one wall. The wood floor creaks with age, the wooden beams run bare across the ceiling. And there is always an open hard-seated booth or slightly-crooked stool. The bar is a dark-stained, single slab of solid wood, the shelves behind stocked with bottles and carefully cleaned glasses. This isn't the sort of place with mirrors behind the bar, or much in the way of lighting. No billiard table or jukebox, though there might be a dart board in one corner and a half-finished game of chess set up by the fire. But what The Crossroads lacks in aesthetic, it makes up for with comfortable atmosphere and comradery.
It's frequented by hunters mostly, with their layers of flannel and worn denim, their shotgun cartridges full of rock salt and anti-possession tattoos seared into their skin. The older, grizzled sort with their tales of wendigos and women in white. The middling ones who've fought more demons and even the occasional angel, who can work a spell or two and keep company with cryptids. The younger generation, who've come of age with more tech and less independence, following orders handed down from on high by their supposedly-benevolent benefactors, the British Men of Letters. There is the occasional supernatural scholar as well, a handful of in-the-know townies.
"Meet up at The Crossroads," every hunter worth their salt says to another, word of mouth directing the weary and the road-roughened to a good meal, a good night's sleep, a break in the case.
The owner of the Crossroads has made a name for himself in the supernatural community. He's the new Bobby Singer, the networker, the archivist, the veneer of officialdom that keeps them all out of jail. He's scruffy and short – and when riled up, even more short-tempered. But there's not a law he can't circumvent or arcane piece of lore with which he isn't familiar. Helps that he knows a little magic, and the weakness of every monster, demi-god and supernatural being out there. He serves the best whiskey, always has a warm bed, hot meal and top-notch warding for anyone in need of help.
And he's friends with the remaining Winchester brother, which says everything anyone really needs to know about him.
These days, he goes by the name Gus. He hates that diminutive of his name – too short, too informal. But then, Castiel became Cas, after all. Gus doesn't even remotely suit him, and yet the name implies a new-found fondness, a hard-earned trust. So, Gus it is.
Hearing his name called out by pub regulars and townies and those precious few who remember he once went by something else, Gus likes to imagine that after enough time has passed, enough distance stretches between the demon and the man, that the name will become as comfortable and familiar as rolled up sleeves and starched khakis, as the rhythm of human heartbeat and breath. From time to time, he forgets his name has ever been anything other than Gus. His old name, even when said with cautious affection, can still be a curse on his friends' lips, a reminder of irreversible cruelties and redemption that came too late.
No one ever asks Gus what he did before opening the pub, before he joined the ranks of the people who've dedicated their lives to saving people and hunting things. That's not something anyone asks another hunter, not without a lot of booze and implied consent. And Gus never offers the latter.
Because if anyone knew, they'd kill him. And wouldn't that be a shame, after everything.
For the most part, he enjoys owning and running a pub. First drink is on the house, for anyone who is a hunter or supernatural scholar or a regular. He doesn't need the money, after all – that comes from careful investment. No, he runs the pub as a place of sustenance, safety and commiseration. And when needed, as a brick-and-mortar base of operations for resistance against the British Men of Letters' dominion over American hunters.
In a storeroom in the back, Gus keeps the books and artifacts he was able to salvage from the bunker, before the damned armchair demonologists reclaimed it. There are shelves lined with neatly labeled jars of spell ingredients, old tomes and case files kept carefully organized and well-thumbed, bags of rock salt he includes in weekly inventory orders and a casing press for making shotgun shells. Jerry-rigged surveillance equipment, extra burner phones, a case full of amulets, pre-made hex bags, a make-shift triage station. A safe stocked with unmarked bills and blank passports, FBI badges, press credentials. In the apartment above the pub, a beat up old Dell runs algorithms coded by some peppy, redheaded hacker who'd been passing through, searching news stories for cases and possible leads. Gus pretends to himself he still has his fingers in a few pies. In reality, he knows he's very much on the periphery.
Where once endless existence was occupied with the managing of crossroads contracts, keeping demonkind in line, and averting the occasional apocalypse, now Gus fills the passing days and years with purchase orders and advising on cases, knocking foam off the heads of beers and tending to heads knocked against the ugliness of the world. It doesn't amount to much. Gus knows that, too.
He keeps a dusty bottle of Craig behind the bar. It's never been opened. Never will be, most likely. As a rule, he doesn't serve Craig. He's saving this bottle for something, though he isn't sure what.
Whenever he's passing through Kansas, Castiel stops at The Crossroads. Maybe that's because the pub is a convenient midway point to wherever he's headed, or because it's near the bunker, with all its bittersweet memories. It's not out of any sense of fellowship between the two of them, that's for certain. He spends most of his time hunkered down at the end of the bar, hunched over a pint. Drunk, more often than not. Sullen, even when he's sober.
These days, there is no trenchcoat. Cas looks like every other hunter in the pub, only rougher, older in some unmeasurable way. Battered and embittered, none of that angelic consternation shining through the grizzle and bark. Throws himself body and soul into every case, against every monster. It no longer seems to matter to Cas if he makes it back to The Crossroads. If he lives.
"I'm getting a plaque made with your name on it for that stool," Gus mutters darkly, pouring the former angel another beer, resigned. "You know, for when I have to host your bloody wake."
Cas' smile is sour, mocking. "And what, exactly, am I supposed to do? Open a café and bookstore somewhere?" His laugh is as hollow as the look in his eyes. "Maybe I could call it the Angel's Perch."
That stings. Cas' tongue is sharper than it used to be. Gus' skin is thinner.
Beyond the barbed banter that isn't really banter anymore, Gus does his best to take care of Castiel. Doesn't matter that the sense of responsibility and concern isn't mutual. It never has been, not for Gus. He does his best to ensure Cas eats, and sleeps lying down rather than flat-faced on the bar. There's a routine to it, like there is to everything now, in the absence of anything else.
When Cas conks out, Gus drags him upstairs to the apartment, to the spare room reserved as a hunter's safe house, and undresses the other man. There's nothing sensual about it – too many years causing bodies too much pain for there to be anything gentle or arousing in his touch. But there is something empathetic in the way Gus does it in soft silence, brow furrowed, reconciled sighs always replacing colorful curses as the bruises and half-stitched wounds reveal themselves.
Everything the former angel is wearing, and everything in the oily, sweat-smeared duffel in his trunk, goes into the wash. When Cas wakes in the morning, groggy and foul-tempered, he never remarks on the fresh bandages, the smeared ointment, even the hot cup of coffee pressed on him as he shlogs into the kitchen. It would be too complicated to sort out – the kindness done, the depth of kindness owed for past wrongs. Their entire trampled history, littered with emotional landmines, stretching back to days when they were ontological counterparts, an Angel of the Lord and the King of Hell. Where does a good night's sleep and a gourmet cup of joe fit into all that? It's better just to leave it, and press on.
Gus doesn't ask about Castiel's cases, or how he fills the space in between, or if Cas has seen Sam. He just secretly pads the hunter's wallet and leaves a crustless sandwich in a ziplocked baggie on the passenger seat before Cas drives away.
In the emptiness of those mornings, Gus longs to work up the courage to apologize for things already forgiven. It won't make Cas stay, or heal, or have hope again. They're all past that.
Since The Crossroads opened, Sam has lowered himself to visit only twice. Gus doesn't take it personally, even though it is entirely personal.
The first time was because Sam was working a case, full of darkness and magic, and needed to utilize the other's expertise. Gus took it as a sign of progress. Afterwards, he learned through the hunter grapevine that the remaining Winchester brother had been incarcerated in a high-security facility for six months prior, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with incriminating evidence. He never contacted Gus to secure his freedom. It was months after the fact, but Gus still called, allegedly to follow up on the case. Underlying their casual conversation was an unspoken, one-sided plea. For Sam to just talk to him, let him know the hunter was alright, let him know if there was anything – anything – Gus could do to help. It was an admittedly poor attempt at convincing both of them that neither were entirely alone in the world.
The call was short. Sam promised to stop in soon for a drink. He never did.
The second time, Gus does his best not to recall. Dark days. Not as dark in comparison to many of those preceding them, but enough. Cas, lost, drunk, flailing at life's edge. Gus, holding him down, holding him back. Begging, on behalf of both their lives. He called Sam, and this time, Sam came. The Winchester-by-birth and Winchester-by-decree spoke privately, at great length. And then Sam was gone. And Cas got better. Not his old self, never that. But better.
It was a sad comment that of the three of them, Gus is comparatively well-adjusted. The one with purpose and a home, with regulars that might be counted as friends. The closest to having a life.
There are nights Gus manages to go to bed with a smile on his face. The pub is full of familiar faces, the regulars share stories of saving lives and show off new battle wounds, the cases are resolved and the chokehold by the British Men of Letters leaves only the dull, familiar bruises. Gus pours beers from the tap, serves up hot, buttered pretzels, concedes to a game of chess.
And there are nights that he closes down after the last barfly stumbles out, drags himself upstairs, and drowns himself in a bottle of scotch. Nights he can't sleep, memories and nightmares intertwined like incestuous lovers. Nights that Gus is certain there is a scratching at his door, the foul breath of brimstone, the hounds of hell come to rend his soul to shreds a second time. On those nights, Gus nearly prays. He would pray, if Castiel could still hear him. He would pray for Cas to stagger his way back to The Crossroads, bang on the door. Demand to be let in, demand a drink, and another, and another. So that Gus might then drag the familiar, unconscious form upstairs, and no longer be alone.
That's why that night, long after closing time, Gus thinks the commotion downstairs, the breaking of glasses and bottles behind the bar, is Castiel.
Down the stairs and around the front of the bar, words of stale provocation composed on his tongue, Gus isn't prepared for the smell of sulfur that assaults him. A dark figure ambles in the shadowed recess, comfortable and casual in its surroundings, certain of its ability to assert through violence its ownership of the pub and whatever it might want out of its tenure here.
Gus stills, suspended in the inanimate dark. The demon behind the bar continues to sort through the bottles along the back shelves, careless, intentional in that carelessness.
The pub is well equipped against such an unwelcome patron. Demon traps carefully carved into the recessed ceiling above the entrances, faintly traced into the floorboards. Warding subtly worked into the wooden beams and counter. An angel blade tucked up underneath the bar. The demon must be particularly powerful – or knowledgeable – to have forced its way past all of that. Gus edges his way around the room, guided by his fingertips and the soft scuff of a boot against table legs. He is barely moving, barely breathing. Never takes his eyes off the creature behind the bar. There is another angel blade in the rafters. Lodged under a fireplace hearth stone is a fireproof lockbox, containing a small firearm and six demon trap-inscribed bullets. Everything else is beyond reach, past the bar and the demon, in the storeroom.
A tinkling sound as the demon drops ice cubes into a tumbler. A creak under Gus' feet. He is nearly to the booth below the angel blade. The night only needs to stretch out its interminable strain a few moments more.
"Whiskey, on the house!"
Gus moves. He moves like a man half his age and doubly aware of what happens next if he isn't fast enough. Onto the hard seat of the booth, onto the back of it, up and into the rafters. His hand closing around the blessed coldness of the blade. His weight carrying him back to the floor in nearly the same instant. Gus lands in a crouch, muscles drawn tight, ready.
The demon is still on the far side of the bar, his back to the room. A shadow darker than those gathered around him. Completely unconcerned, and enjoying himself. He half turns, like he's sharing a particularly good joke. "You want one? Nobody should die sober." Liquor pours sweetly, enticingly, into the tumbler.
Gus edges forward, towards the open space of the pub. One hand outstretched in the dark, eyes still adjusting to the dim light. The blade is a cold comfort, imprinting into his palm. His breathing is an unsteady rasp against the dark. "Since you're kind enough to offer – I'd prefer scotch, on the rocks."
The demon chuckles. It's dry, and humorless, and disquietingly familiar.
"See, I thought you might say that."
A bottle thuds onto the countertop. And then the demon propels himself up and over the bar. Swings his legs over the stools, drops onto the toes of his boots with a weightless ferocity. The ice in his glass hardly rattles, hardly spills a drop at all. Bright, black eyes. A lazy, sultry smile on an achingly familiar face.
"Gus," The demon ponders. "That wouldn't be short for Fergus, now – would it?"
The world is a black hole, and Gus is spiraling into it. There is no strength in his limbs suddenly. No longer any substance to the angel blade suspended between slackened fingers. He is hollow-boned and weightless. He is weak, and frightened of the consequences of that weakness. He is not enough. He never was. Cas – he should be the one standing here. Or Sam. Anyone, anyone else. Not Gus.
"…Dean?"
The demon laughs, that same dry chuckle. And in its recesses are countless silenced screams and unheeded pleas for mercy, deeds darker than those committed on Hell's rack. Endless nights hunting sport and sex and blood, the road behind littered with broken bottles and broken bodies. In that laugh, Gus can hear an echo of another monster. Black bile on the back of his tongue. He chokes it down, along with the shock. The fear refuses to be so easily swallowed.
Dean slams back his drink, tosses the glass aside. Picks the bottle up off the bar.
The bottle of Craig.
Everything in Gus suddenly boils down to a hot, black rage. If the demon opens that bottle, if even a drop of Craig touches his lips, or – worse – is spilled out on the floor in a show of petty insult, this will be Gus' last night on this earth. He will kill this monstrosity, and surely die in the process. He longs, suddenly, for the old days. The surge of power inside him, the ability to smite and conquer at will, to sit upon the bones of his enemies and calmly sip Earl Grey. Now, he has only this small, insignificant life. And he can waste it any way he wants. Dean knows. He knows all of it. He can see it in Gus' eyes, the fury and the futility, and revels in it. Imbibes – perhaps a little too wantonly. The demon smiles, and reaches for the stopper.
The soft creak of floorboards in the dark pub, and Gus is within arm's reach of Dean. Feels his teeth and hands clench, feels his heartbeat steady. The two stare at one another – the man who was a demon, and the demon who was a man.
Gus hits him, hard.
And again. Hits him with the hand clenched around the hilt of the angle blade. Hits him with all the grinding fury acquired over the years of absence. Dean smirks, tastes the blood on his lip. He cocks his own fist back with sluggish self-confidence. Before he can deliver the blow, Gus slams himself into the demon. The two go barreling over the bar.
They are a roar of violence and broken glass, a fury of fists and curses. And then Gus is straddling the demon, and whamming the angel blade against Dean's temple. The sound of breaking bones – Dean's jaw or Gus' knuckles. Gus hits the demon over and over, and over again. He beats Dean unconscious. He beats him across the temple until he is certain Dean is not getting back up. Until the sickening surge of fear subsides.
The pub resumes that flat quiet of an indeterminable hour. The hilt of the angel blade is bloodied. It slips from his grasp as Gus leans against the bar and staggers up, away. Distance. There cannot be enough distance between them. Standing over the demon, Gus feels again an unexpected weakness in his limbs, adrenaline stymieing into acute presence in the now. He takes great gulps of the darkness around them, shaken by the sudden silence of the pub.
Shaken by the still form at his feet.
Dean is a memory made solid – the shape of his face, the cut of his clothes. The mark on his arm. There is a feral edge to him, a violence straining at his skin even in unconsciousness. Something inside Gus breaks at the sight of him. There is an unexpected wetness on his cheeks.
He imagined this moment, more than once. Never like this. Gus never imagined that seeing Dean like this – seeing the monster his friend has become – would be this incredibly painful. But it is.
"I owe you my soul," Gus whispers, his tears turning into soft rage. "You bloody well beat it into me, didn't you? Seems the least I can do – " he grabs the demon by the heels " – is repay the favor."
And Gus drags Dean out from behind the bar.
He knows he needs to act quickly. He drags the demon into the back, into the brick-walled storeroom with its etchings of sigils and spellwork and the large, engraved demon trap at its center. Sticks a particularly potent hex bag in the demon's pocket to keep him sedated. He empties out the carefully catalogued books and casefiles, the small armory and spell ingredients. Priceless, irreplaceable books are thrown, bottles accidently broken against the floor, spewing blessed oil and phoenix flame, witch hazel and demon blood. White sparks burst against metal as he welds bolts into the floor, within the bounds of the demon trap. Out of an old trunk, Gus ropes heavy lengths of chain, a thick iron collar, handcuffs and ankle cuffs clanking at the ends.
All the while, the demon lays splayed in the center of the room, a cataclysm rendered temporarily comatose.
With an awkward tenderness, Gus secures the iron collar around the demon's throat. He is strangely grateful for all the unintended rehearsals, hauling Cas' drunken dead weight up the stairs. Practice makes perfect, and Gus lifts Dean's inert body into a chair. Secures the cuffs and chains. Checks the binding spells, the demon trap, ensures all necessary precautions are in place. He cannot get out of the room fast enough.
Gus slams shut the door to the storeroom. He stands facing it, drawing in one breath after another. He's shaking.
The demon trap will hold for only so long. Gus is sure of it. This is a demonic Winchester he's dealing with, after all. Gus doesn't need to weigh his options as to what to do next. There is only one road ahead, and that is the cure.
It will take time. His blood isn't pure, even now. And consecrated ground is required. The nearest church is miles away. Well, there's that old adage about prophets and mountains, and suddenly, Gus feels entirely capable of carrying a mountain the required distance, preferably on his back, but he'll crawl the damned distance on his knees, if necessary. This is Dean, after all.
Behind the bar, the unbroken bottle of Craig beckons. Gus collects it, returns it to its rightful place.
He doesn't sleep that night. He doesn't drink, either. Gus sits at his tiny kitchen table and stares into the dark, nerves skimming the razor's edge, afraid to breathe. Listening. Listening to the demon down below, howling and thrashing about in his chains, stomping the floor, a maelstrom of pressurized murder. And then unnervingly quiet. Gus imagines those black eyes staring out into the darkness, seething, patient.
He considers closing the pub. Turn the entirety of his attention to the monster writhing in his storeroom. Foolish. A red flag, a declaration of intent or trouble, enough to have every hunter within driving distance banging on his door and blowing up his phone. Enough, even, to bring him the unwanted scrutiny of the local Men of Letters. An unnecessary, dangerous distraction.
The pub remains open, and the calls still come in and the casework piles up. He ignores the calls whenever possible, hands the cases off. He keeps the pint glasses filled, the stories drifting across the bar, and all the hunting supplies properly stocked. He turns down offers for games of chess, apologizes that there's no hot meals, no beds for the night. Pours a glass of the good whiskey instead, makes casual conversation, and sees everyone out when closing time comes round. When he's running the pub, Gus tends bar with a stilted smile and half an ear tuned for the sound of the storeroom door wrenching off its hinges. The angel blade is a solid weight under the bar.
And when he is not running the pub, there is only the all-consuming, blood-red thrall of the demon and the cure. The darkness of the rooms behind the bar, the air sucked out of every encounter with the thing Dean has become, the narrow repetitiveness of each night, and his own sudden sobriety.
Gus consecrates the ground of the storeroom, with holy water and incense and a string of Latin that still stings even after all these years. Dean's eyes follow him, taunting. Gus ignores the demands, the insults and curses, the sly smiles that yearn to slither inside him and feast on his innards. Ignores the questions and the probing, the compliments and attempts at comradery. Gus is too ground down, too soul-sick, to return any of it with his own smirk, a stinging slight, an all-too-knowing aside. He's carried the weight of his own sins, carried the weight of Cas' slow self-destruction and the aimless grief strewn in the wake of Dean's absence, far longer than he was ever that man on the verge of reclaiming his humanity that Dean Winchester so briefly knew. He has nothing to offer Dean now other than his own restoration.
And he consecrates the small, slant-roof office under the staircase. Sprinkles holy water and lights the stubs of candles and repeats the incantations among the shelves of carefully catalogued invoices and insurance forms and liquor licenses. Gus steps inside. Closes the door to that closet of an office, closes the door on the lonely, empty silence of the pub. And he searches for words, searches for where to even begin.
There is the syringe. There is the blood sluicing along its length. His hands shake the first time. Shake each time, always the gut-deep dread of a faint tendril of black blood curling through the rich claret. The damned curing the damned. There is no such thing as salvation, only one attempt at redemption after another. The dark nights and the doses draw out, each worse than the last.
"Fuckin' hypocrite." Dean smiles, like the slash of a knife across the neck. "You always were second-rate, insignificant. A loser. No good at being king of debauchery, depravity and good times. And now look at you – no good at being one of the good guys, the runt of the litter. You're nothing. Give it up, man. Give it up – and I'll go easy on you."
Dean sneers, and he snarls. He taunts and sweet-talks. He talks like they're having a beer at the end of the bar, like they're back in the bunker, like he's his old self again. He fakes sincerity often enough and well enough. Anyone else would have fallen for it. He asks about Sam. Asks about Cas. His attempts at humanity always devolve into dry, humorless laughter that prick the hairs on the back of Gus' neck. And he roars, as his blood boils and his demonic essence convulses after each administered dose.
"You're still just as much a goddamn monster as I am." He grinds out, catching Gus' conscience between his teeth. "At least I'm honest about it."
Wreathed in this shared darkness and the blood magic of the cure, Dean invokes the musty memory of delicious pleasure and still-born horror mingling with another's screams, the required precision with a knife to maim and still sustain life, their mutual monstrosity in which one now wallows and the other carries as a dull, remorseless weigh in his heart. It is a test of Gus' endurance, this vibrant reminder of his once-dissolute existence, and he composes countless, unvoiced negations. He knows that's what the demon wants – to hear Gus refute and defend, to construct an illusionary boundary of absolutes between selves and time.
Instead, Gus makes the humiliating march from one consecrated ground to another and kneels. It becomes his daily ritual, the lolling litany of his sins a bitter medicine against the disease raging through his friend. Praying to the atrophied divinity that supposedly conceived their world. Gus hates the hubris inherent in whatever two-bit god had the indecency to expose the boundless devotion and intimacy of two brothers to the world, hates it more than he hates himself. Not nearly as much as he hates the oily blackness coursing through Dean Winchester.
Some of the regulars in the pub begin to take notice – the bags under his eyes from countless sleepless nights, the sudden loss of weight from smelling searing human flesh whenever he attempts to cook, the slightly manic atmosphere now lingering around the pub's rafters. Gus does his best to dispel it, with tight-lipped smiles and laconic reassurances. He's stretching himself thin in that regard, he knows it. There is no help from that quarter. If hunters would kill Gus for what he no longer was, there is no doubt as to what they would do to Dean. Or any doubt that they would fail in killing him, and what Dean would then do – enjoy doing – to them.
The progress is agonizingly slow.
"Hey, tell me something – " Dean's mockery, once casual in its contempt, now carries a quiver around its edges. "All those little atrocities you committed, the babies' skulls you bashed in, the bodies on the bed and the blood on the walls. The people who were counting on you, trusted you, and you let down. How the hell do you live with yourself?"
"Same as you will." Gus replies, with a gentleness and a harshness that his own humanity has granted him. He thinks he sees something in Dean's eyes. "One miserable, relentless day after another."
Gus knows. Gus knows better than anyone that living is the hardest part. Easy enough to make some grand gesture and go out in a blaze of glory, hoping for some semblance of restitution. Easy enough to throw himself against the world until he breaks, or drown himself in drink, or take his own life in penance. Living, by comparison, is messy. It is waking up in the middle of the night, soaked in sweat, hearing the screams of his victims, of his friends. It is the absence he rendered in others' lives, the soul he bought or skin he wore. It is the condemnation in the corners of his name, his old name. Living with what he's done, making what measly amends life allows him, is far worse than dying like a monster. This is what possessing humanity – what the Winchesters – did to him.
Curing Dean is an act of attrition, of love. It is an act of revenge.
The corruption of his blood continues to weaken the cure. When Gus does allow himself to rest, he crumples into his pillow and sinks like a stone into oblivion. In his sobriety, there's no consolation at the bottom of a bottle. There is only the pub, and the confessional, and the demon, and the cure.
And then, Cas stumbles in.
He shuffles into the pub and up to the bar, shouldering aside regulars, acknowledging Gus with his accustomed grunt, and collapses onto the stool at the end of the bar. Smelling of stale beer and long hours on the road. Looking like he's lost a fight, and gone too long without sleep. Old blood on his knuckles – his or someone's or something else's – as his hands curl around the pint Gus sets before him. Gus knows that he can't keep the demon in his storeroom hidden, not from Cas. There is no keeping Castiel from Dean Winchester.
He waits until the pub empties out for the night, waits until it's just the two of them. Just the two of them and the pub, like it's been all these years. And Gus considers how best to do this. It would be best to haul Cas up the stairs to the apartment, pour them each a cup of coffee, sit down at that little kitchen table barely big enough for two, and tell him. Tell him everything. It would be better if Gus knew how to say what needs to be said, how to ease open this old wound, without causing it to bleed.
Cas has no such compunction where Gus is concerned.
"You going to tell me what's going on?" Cas slurs, eyes narrowed over the rim of his pint glass, drinking the dregs. "What the hell are you scheming now?"
He allows Gus to take the empty glass from him. Only Gus doesn't refill it. He washes it, wipes it dry. Puts it up on the shelf with the others, out of reach.
"After all these years, you still don't trust me."
Cas stares – stares him down, from his half-slouch across the bar. And Gus is hurt to suddenly see that old spark of suspicion, of judgmental dismissal, in the former angel's eyes. It is a knife in his back, unearned.
And so Gus opens the storeroom door, and reunites Dean and Castiel.
Cas, wide-eyed and half-drunk, shoves past Gus and staggers in. He nearly stumbles across the demon trap in his bleary-eyed bewilderment. A gentle hand on his shoulder holds the hunter back, keeps him safe, keeps them all safe. The two stare at each other – the demon taunt with honed, unspent violence. The former angel, dull and creased and weather-worn and aching. An amused, slick smile against an uncomprehending stutter of disbelief and heartbreak. Dean makes insinuations, silently discounted and brushed aside by everyone. Cas makes promises, swears oaths of devotion and unconditional forgiveness, bawls like a baby after Gus closes the door between them and the demon.
They climb the stairs to the apartment in silence. Gus pours them each that cup of coffee.
For the first time in all their acquaintance, the former angel and former demon talk. Their conversation lacks the tone they once employed between them, the banter on one side and contempt on the other. It's honest, if sometimes loud and full of fury. In the end, they come to an understanding. They will cure Dean, if it kills both or either of them.
Best Sam doesn't know. Not yet. If there's one thing Gus knows about the Winchesters, it's their ability to fuck everything up in order to save one another. Better that cooler heads prevail.
The daily slog to the confessional under the stairs ends. Gus is grateful for that. He's not sure how much more his conscience, his sanity, could have borne. Now that Cas is here, now that they're in this together – well, a burden shared is a burden lifted. When Cas asks why Gus didn't pick up the phone, call for help, confide in him sooner, a single look is enough to convey the reality of their relationship, the extent to which Castiel leaned on Gus in recent years. This new reality undermines their previous roles as divine retribution and smarmy toad, of besotted wanderer and resigned enabler. If they are to do this, they must be more than that now: friends, equals.
Cas undergoes a change. His clothes are clean, his beard trimmed. The haunted shroud of his eyes is replaced with a cautious gleam Gus has not seen in years. The cure will still take time – Cas is no stranger to spiritual ruin and repentance, his blood barely more pure – but the spaces in between are filled with casework and managing the pub. If hunters and regulars are surprised Castiel now picks up the phone or the tab as often as Gus, they make no mention of it. When Gus now finds the former angel asleep face-down at the bar, it is encircled by lore rather than empty bottles. The morning cup of coffee is now accepted with a gruff expression of thanks, and to Gus's unexpected and infinite relief, that gratitude is gruff solely because it comes from Castiel, in the same tone he once floundered before popular culture or greeted his favorite Winchester.
Dean is also different. Not himself, not entirely. But enough. Enough for them to know the cure is working. That there's hope. For the first time in years, there is actually hope.
It is absurd of course, maybe even a little perverse. And yet, somehow, in the determined companionship of the angel-turned-hunter, and the reluctant company of the imprisoned hunter-turned-demon, Gus feels as though something important is happening at The Crossroads. Something good. He is happy, despite everything. He is actually happy.
"He's going to need you," Cas tells Gus late one night, after the excruciating crucible of administering another dose to the demon. "When this is over, when the cure takes hold, Dean is going to need someone who understands." The former angel smiles self-deprecatingly, and shrugs. "Guess I finally need to get my shit together. You can't carry all of us."
Gus doesn't know what to say to that. All this time, he thought he was barely keeping his own head above water.
The world is larger than the pub, larger than the three of them, Gus knows that. With Cas behind the bar, pouring drinks and sharing stories, he sits at the tiny kitchen table in his apartment, and dials Sam's number. He lets the phone ring. And ring, and ring. He knows Sam is never going to pick up. Not when he sees it's Gus' number. And Gus, for the very first time, is glad of it. At least he can say he made the effort. He can at least say that.
And then, there comes a morning Gus goes down to secure the demon before opening the pub, and Dean lifts his head, meets his eyes. The two of them stare at one another. Dean stares at Gus like he's looking for a missing piece of himself. And there is no mistaking what passes between them.
That night, Gus closes down the pub early. He stands behind the bar, looks around the pub. Runs his hands along the dark-stained, single slab of solid wood, listens to the wooden floors creak with their age. He straightens the stools, places the bottles and the carefully cleaned glasses back on their shelves. He reaches down and pulls out the bottle of Craig from underneath the bar. Dusts it off, polishes the glass until it gleams. Gus leaves the bottle and three tumblers on the bar, waiting, expectant.
As Dean enters the final hours of the cure, an unspoken solemnity takes hold of all three of them. Cas crouches beside him, whispering soft words. Dean rarely responds, seemingly awash in the crash of humanity against the darkness that has encased his soul for nearly half a decade. Gus remembers this endless hour, as he sat strapped in that church all those years ago, feeling his defenses crumble and unwillingness give way first to horror and then a strange blend of relief and unrelenting shame.
It wasn't any easier, or more welcome, the second time.
"Sorry," Dean murmurs, as Gus kneels beside him to administer another dose. "Sorry for what I said. Wasn't – you're not – "
"I was." Gus replies, not unkindly. "And so were you. And now? Now, we're not." He wants to say something more, something comforting. But the hard truth, so many years after his own redemption, is that there is no comfort against one's own monstrosity.
The world condenses down to this moment, this brick-walled storeroom in a pub on the corner of two Kansas backroads. Castiel's final confession in the small, slant-roof office under the stairs. His palm, slick with blood. The last incantation. The cure culminates in Cas' quiet inquiry, the catch in Dean's voice, in the scuff of Gus' boot against the floor, scratching out the spellwork and the binding. On shaky legs, Dean rises. It takes one step to leave the demon trap. It will take many more steps than that to leave these long, wasted years behind them.
Dean Winchester and Castiel stare at each other. Into one another, as if they might see the other's soul. As if they might find their own waiting for them there. Dean doesn't seem to know what to say. Neither does Cas. Slowly, ever so slowly, they find the words.
Gus considers leaving them to it, leaving the storeroom. He starts to make his way towards the door, quietly, respectfully.
And then, Dean says his name. His old name. And when he does, it's without the well-earned animosity, without the darker pages of their history. It is heartfelt, and sore, and scared.
And he remembers how much he dislikes the name Gus. How little it suits him. Who he is now – a man who works the periphery of the supernatural, a resource and recourse for hunters and cryptids alike, a man who knocks the heads off beers and looks after the heads knocked against the world, who serves the best whiskey on the house, and strives with every breath in him to keep this stupid, crazy, fallible world spinning – that's who he is now. And he'll be damned – again – not to be known by his proper name.
Dean is staring at him, hesitantly. The guilt and the horror of what lies behind him, the uncertainty of what lies ahead in his eyes. He remembers what that felt like, that night in the old Men of Letters bunker, all those years ago. Remembers how far a gesture, however small, would have gone towards soothing the long, tumultuous road ahead.
So Crowley smiles his old smile, half-cocky and half-sincere. Best to start on familiar ground, after all.
"I'd say this calls for a celebration. Who'd care for some Craig?"
The Crossroads closes for a time. Hunters have to look elsewhere for lore and rock salt and gruff, reluctant guidance. A few nights of rough sleeping under the stars, a few cases which require the involvement of the British Men of Letters more than most would prefer. It remains closed even after Sam Winchester's infamous black '67 Impala is seen parked outside. The roads that meet at The Crossroads, though – strange, the hunters and the regulars say. Seems like they no longer go their separate ways. Seems now like this is where they end.
.
At the Crossroads is one of those fics that germinates from a small concept into something much larger.
The name Fergus is Irish and Scottish, with origins in Latin and proto-Gaelic. It is composed of wiros (man) and gustus (force, vigor, choice), so it could mean "man of force," but also "man of choice," befitting both King!Crowley and Cured!Crowley. Nicknames include Gus, which is modern and casual, and thus employed here by American hunters – and Fergie, which was clearly only an option if I wanted to be tortured with torture that no one in the history of torture had ever been tortured with.
Thank you for reading. Kudos and comments very much appreciated!
-The Demonologist In Denim