Don't Feed After Midnight
Chapter 17
He didn't know how Crowley had done it, but Dean knew he had. It had to be him.
Demon trap and fancy men of letters shackles or not, the slimy little bastard did it, somehow! Made his car— Dean snarled soundlessly as he took the stairs down to the dungeon two at a time, not wanting to think about his poor Baby like that, reduced to spare parts.
Now was the time for payback.
Wrenching open the shelving he stormed in to the dungeon.
Wound up to slug the king of the black eyed douches in the jaw. Hard.
"Damn sonofabitch how'd you do it, Huh?"
Crowley licked his lips and blinked, gazed up at him as if he'd woken from a nap.
"Hello, to you t—"
Dean's next blow took him square in the mouth.
Crowley spat blood and rolled his head to one side, looking up at him from under lowered lids.
"My, my aren't we all het up. Whatever got your motor running, Dean?"
Dean rammed a fist into the demon's gut, and it felt good!
The blow took the bastard's breath away, left him hunched over, panting and breathless.
"You know damn well, you bastard. How'd you do it, tear her to bits, from all the way in here?
Don't care what Sam says, I'm gonna beat it outta you."
Crowley bared his bloody teeth at him.
"Go ahead and try Squirrel.
Let's juggle some nuts.
Do your damnedest."
Furious, Dean stomped his boot down into the demon's crotch.
Watched with manic satisfaction as Crowley doubled over with tears leaking from his eyes.
"How's that for juggling, you asshat? I'm gonna wail on you 'til you're in as many pieces as my freaking car!"
Dean swung away to study the racks lining the dungeon walls, with a mind to select something sharp to begin the process.
Crowley let out a wheezing bark of laughter.
"More exercise," the demon huffed breathlessly. "Yes, that would do it.
Come on Dean, you really think you've got the balls to take me apart? Enough with the heavy petting already.
Surely those bar flies must have mentioned, there's such a thing as too much foreplay." Crowley eyed the blade in his hand with challenging eyes. "Stick it in me already big boy."
Dean did.
….
Some indeterminate amount of time later, Crowley was bloodied and breathing rough, yet still, he kept running his damn mouth.
"Dean!" Sam's voice caught him off guard, as did the hand on his shoulder.
"Come to join in, have we Samantha?" Crowley asked, his voice rough and breathless, "can't say I haven't fantasised."
Sam ignored him, "Dean stop." A big paw wrapped around his wrist, squeezed relentlessly until the holy water lathed blade fell from his grasp and landed with a splash and clatter on the metal work top.
"Quit it Sam, I want answers." He snarled, ripping his arm out of Sam's grasp. I want payback, went unspoken, but Sam'd heard it.
"Dean, it wasn't Crowley!" Sam barked and took a step putting himself between Dean and the demon. Turned to stare at what his brother had done to said demon chained in the chair, his lip curled with a bitchy kind of disgust.
"Now your squeamish? You argued for offing him, remember.
After what he did to Sarah…"
"I'm, I'm not squeamish. It's just … can't you see, he's enjoying it Dean."
"Don't be—" for the first time Dean actually looked, and saw the telltale bulge tenting the slacks over the demon's crotch.
Seeing that, the ragged catch in Crowley's breathing took on a whole new load of connotations.
"Oh, ewww!" Dean staggered back a step glaring at the demon in disgust.
Crowley gazed back at him with lust blown pupils, bit down slowly on the meat of his lower lip, and winked provocatively.
"Was it good for you too Dean? I have to say, you look less pent up."
"You sick Sonofa—"
"Now now Dean, don't go clutching your pearls or try pretending you didn't want it. This isn't the casting couch, handsome."
Sam caught his arm again shaking his head.
"The car wasn't Crowley." He hissed."There was a symbol 'round the car. Can't place it. But, it was made of bolts, screws and other small stuff, obviously removed from the car…
Some of them were iron, Dean.
You tell me, how a demon— even the king of Hell, could remove and meticulously place, a bunch of stuff like that, into a symbol."
Sam shoved a note pad into his hand with a symbol drawn on it. From the corner of his eye, Dean thought he caught the surprised rise of Crowley's brows. But when he swung his head to look directly at the demon, Crowley was impassive.
"I'll tell you something else Dean. Kevin and I checked, and there's not a chip, crack, scratch or dent on any of the parts that came off the impala. Not one!
It's, it's, like some carefully orchestrated prank." Sam ran a harried hand through his hair.
"One set up for maximum impact and minimum carnage. Does any of that sound like Crowley to you?"
"Moose is right, Squirrel. Minimum carnage. Not my style. Carnage, well, you could say, it rocks my world." He jerked his wrists against the manacles and leaned back into the chair with a sated smile, "case in point."
"Crowley, I swear to god."
The demon chuckled darkly. "What Dean? Talk dirty to me. I'm positively agape with anticipation, what exactly are you going to do to me?"
Sam snorted. "Don't encourage him Dean. And seriously Crowley, just give it a rest already.
Or… when everythings over, we won't kill you. We'll shoot you full of devils trap bullets, cut you into pieces and bury each one in a different state. Under 6 feet of cement."
Crowley's mouth snapped shut.
"Kevin thinks the unlocked door, and the lockdown are both linked to whatever this is." Sam continued without a sideways glance at the pouting demon. "The answer is up stairs, in the men of letters library. That symbol has to be a clue."
Crowley smiled coyly, and leaned forward, his bloodied lips parted to speak. Sam twisted his head to glare at him and the demon subsided with a shrug, slumping back against the chair.
Sam grabbed Dean's shoulder and started dragging him back towards the library and away from Crowley. "You have to quit letting him play you, Dean." He muttered in hushed tones, glancing over his shoulder. "We talked about this. Bad attention for something like Crowley, is better than no attention at all.
Let him rot."
…ooo0ooo…
Crowley watched the Winchester's go, with them went the light, literally and figuratively.
They left him alone in the dark, and wasn't that always the way.
In the end he was always alone.
He had thought he and Dean were having a moment.
They were. It had been like they were alone in the universe, when those mesmerising green eyes and those gun calloused hands were on him.
Two consenting adults, a moment of pure passion.
He had to admit it, Dean was good. The empty, freezing, sucking void in his core, the one that ached and howled inside of him without ceasing; it had felt like maybe, it could be quenched by the violence and destruction of those big strong hands.
But then Samuel bloody Winchester walked into the room, and it had been like the song, a sun being eclipsed by a moon. Dean didn't see him when Samantha walked in the room.
The moment had popped like a soap bubble.
…
"You're looking for love in all the wrong places." Zeke's dry voice cut into Crowley's thoughts from across and to the right of the dungeon doors.
"What a surprise, it's the self help mechanic." Crowley replied. Leveling a sarcastic smile in Zeke's direction, and felt the crusted blood crack and pull at the stubble around his mouth.
"Love? Love is a crutch that the blind and weak cling to. A lie humans tell themselves to justify their pathetic little lives. Besides I'm a demon you infuriating little Dr Phil impersonator. DEMONS DON'T LOVE!"
"I never said they could, but demons do lust for things they cannot experience, inspire or create. You want them all to look at you like your worthy, though you can never escape the knowledge that you're not.
You want to be loved.
To cherry pick a term from the tall ones head, you're a nacissist."
"It takes one to know one." Crowley let the corner of his mouth tug further upwards with contempt, "your little japes and pranks, hiding in the shadows crying, "look at me, look at me." Yet you're too much of a simpering coward to show your face. Just like your kind were too cowardly to pick a side between the Seelie and UnSeelie courts.
Fairy."
A slow clapping filled the space, "Oh bravo, your highness. I had to spell it out for you in nuts and bolts, but you got there in the end.
Now, if only you could narrow it down to a single species.
Oh, and word to the wise, none of us are fond of that term.
Fairy.
It's rude and insulting. And we take insults to heart."
There was a flicker of almost movement in the corner of Crowley's vision. Then a cloud of dusty pinpoints of light engulfed him.
An unpleasant hot-cold sensation squirmed it's way over Crowley's meatsuit, his wounds itched and burned disgustingly and the flesh knit itself back together.
Wiping away every momento from his time spent with Dean.
The dungeon doors creaked open a foot then slammed shut.
Leaving him alone in the dark again.