Don't Feed After Midnight

Chapter 20: Things That Stick Out

'…I love you,
You love me,
We're best friends like friends should be.
With a great big hug,
And a kiss from me to you.
Won't you say you love me too.'

The words echoed through Crowley's head long after the battery on the little music player had died.

Crowley knew a lot about kisses, that little dance of lips, teeth and tongue.
It was something he had always prided himself on.
He'd long styled himself as a lover not a fighter, but of course that was the big lie.
He's incredibly good at the act, but there's never any love in it, not with what he does. It's all a crafted façade, but one he's long excelled at. There is skill to it, artistry, even poetry, and that has to count for something. None of his clients could claim they didn't get their money's worth.
No kiss was quite the same, just as no deal was ever quite the same.
And a kiss could be made to convey a Hell of a lot.

Hugs on the other hand, were foreign entities.
Demons didn't hug. They might fuck, but that was about taking, plundering, sating lust or expressing power over others.
A completely selfish action.

But a hug, that was something designed to give.
A form of touch as comfort or camaraderie, that drew two beings closer and signalled that the participants were not alone; that you were in something together.

Demons had no use for such things, because in Hell you were always alone, no matter how many others were there with you.
Only a fool admitted weakness, then allowed another demon close enough to bury a knife in your gut.
Even in his human existence, hugs had been something foreign, a coin Fergus MacLeod hadn't been able to earn from a mother as callous, cold and distant as the stars.

And family?

What family?

As a pathetic, weak, human child Fergus MacLeod hadn't had a clan. He hadn't even had a father.
Nor any siblings, his Mother had been anything but god fearing or chaste, the woman had been a witch and a whore, one who regretted giving life to her only son intensely, and told him so often for the first 8 years of his miserable life, before going on to abandon him first chance she got.

Family wasn't for the likes of him. An attempt to create one had given him a wife dead in childbed. In-laws that loathed him, and a son of his own he couldn't bare to look at, and who ended up detesting him in turn.

Sam must have told his brother about how he'd broken down in the church, about what he'd said.
How the flannel brigade must have sniggered together over it.

The King of Hell, snivelling and bawling.

"I just want to be loved!"

Hugs weren't for the likes of him, he didn't have friends, or family. He had subjects and made deals with people he could use.

Those were the crumbs left to him.
He'd stitched the meagre rags his pathetic life provided him together, made a cloak of them and worn it as armour.
Built his kingdom on it.
Maybe he was chronically unworthy, but he had still risen to become King of all of the unworthy.
He'd worked hard, done the hard yards under Lilith's thumb, and finally, finally, earned that ultimate place at the top of the heap.

King of Hell.

So what if the good guys, the included ones, looked down on him, laughed or screwed him over in the end.
He didn't need them.
Since he became a demon, became Crowley, he was stronger, smarter, better than the failed whining sack of humanity he started out as.
He didn't need anyone.

And yet… the bloody fairy might be right.

Since Sam attempted that damnable cure on him, a gnawing, aching void had opened up in his chest and made him want… what?

Without meaning to, Crowley found himself tapping a finger to the beat of the song that still circled endlessly in his brain.

… won't you say you love me too…

…ooo0ooo…

Sam was asleep, his head pillowed on a large book, a creeping patch of damp under his slack mouth, forming a darkening tide on the heavy, cracked leather cover.
The book was one which Sam deemed too old to eat or drink around. Yet here he was drooling all over it.

Dean rolled his eyes, simultaneously kicking his brother's chair and dropping the book he was carrying onto the table by Sam's head.

Sam jerked upright with a gasp, hand groping for a gun he wasn't wearing.

"Nice nap?"

Sam glared at him, ridiculous girly hair mashed flat against one side of his face.

"So, while you were getting' your beauty sleep. Which, gotta say, Sammy, you look like you could stand a whole bunch more of. I found that symbol."

Sam scratched at his scalp, combing a giant-ass paw through his too long mop. Then, swiped a weary palm over his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
"You… did?"

Dean nodded and leaned over the table to tap the symbol in the open book he'd brought with him, for emphasis.

"Mmm hmm. Turns out it's fairy."

"Really? A-a fairy?"

"Really.
Kept thinking it looked like somethin' I'd seen. Finally worked it out.
You remember the case in Elwood, Indiana, the disappearance of Patrick Brennin, the watchmaker's son?"

Sam frowned at him.

"First borns goin' missing? Half the freakin' town went ? Those tiny teacups and the… creepy-ass army of bedazzled figurines. You said that woman, Marion, had glitter in the glue she was sniffing. But, turned out she was actually right."
He prompted. Sam was still looking at him blank.

"You banged some hippy chick while I was getting' close encountered, used my abduction as a pickup, because you had no soul?"

Dean saw the exact moment when Sam remembered, something cracked and splintered in his expression.
Aw crap.

"Dean I'm—"

"—Not as good at research as I am, yeah I know. 'Cause I'm just that awesome." He cut in before Sam started trying to apologise for that. If Sam wanted to feel guilty for something, he could save the hand wringing for how he hadn't looked for him when he landed in purgatory. Sam hadn't had a soul in Elwood, but he sure had after Roman Enterprises.

His brother gave him a tired, watery look and the corners of his mouth curled downwards.
"Yeah, you are…" His face did that earnest kicked puppy thing, which still, even after all these years, made him look like a little kid.

Sam picked up the book and started reading.

"Of course, you realise, Dean, that saying something is a fairy is a bit like saying something is terrestrial… it just narrows things down to the plane of existence it originated in…"

"You're forgetting something Sam. A lot of the things that little bastard pulled off my car, to make your freaking symbol, were iron."

"Yeah, exactly, fairies are supposed to be like ghosts and demons—."

"Not all of 'em, turns out there's one kind of fairy that isn't… Gremlins, those suckers aren't affected by cold iron, nor silver either."

"A gremlin? Seriously?"

"Seriously. Stripe!
Apparently the little assholes were a giant pain in the ass during the war. Had a hardon for planes… on both sides." Dean frowned, something sort of niggled at the back of his mind, like there was something he ought to have worked out, but he couldn't quite grasp it.

"So, how do we get rid of a Gremlin, Dean?"

He tipped his brother a shrug, "From what I read, Steven Spielberg was full of crap. Feeding 'em after midnight and getting 'em wet, does diddly.
As for killing 'em. No idea, Sam. I did the hard bit, worked out the monster of the week, figuring out the rest is why I keep you round. You and Kevin hit the books, I'm gonna finish up with the impala, then head into town. Pick up a crate of cream, and a microwave. I mean, if it worked on nudist Tinkerbell…"

"Nudist?" Kevin's voice came from behind them.

Dean grinned at the boy, "Fairies Kev', turns out clothing is an optional extra for some of 'em. Unfortunately, what we have here is a gremlin.
Not a tiny naked glowing chick with perky nipples."

Kevin gaped at him.

Sam huffed. "Dean found the symbol, figured out what our prankster is. It's a fairy, a gremlin to be exact. Because they aren't bothered by cold iron. And why do you always have to mention the nipples, Dean?"

He shrugged and winked at Kevin. "Guess they just kinda… stuck out." With that he turned on his heel and left the brain trust to their research.