Chapter Twenty-Eight
The accented litany of complaint continued as the Winchesters pushed through the scrubby trees, seeking the source of prolific protestation.
"Get out of it! Get out of it, I said, you damned doggy dishmops! Ow! OW!"
There was a squawk of protest, and the sound of tearing fabric.
"Oh, bollocks! Look what you've done! That's bespoke, you little turd, I'll have your ears for that! I'll set my dog on you, and she'll tear your disgustingly doggy little souls right out of your nauseatingly endearing fluffy little carcasses! You don't know who you're dealing with, you miserable things, I'm the KiiiIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
The rising shriek was one they'd encountered before: it was the distinctive and unmistakeable sound of a demon realising that it had Hellhounds on its case.
Or, as in this instance, on its tailored skirt.
They found their way into a small clearing, where Miss 'Keely Fearguson', resplendent in tailored twin set, pearls, and sensible but very expensive shoes, was staring in disbelief, mouth agape, at the two adorably fuzzy Cockapoos now hanging from her hemline.
To give Crowley his due, he recovered magnificently, turning a welcoming smile to the Winchesters. "Hello, ladies!" he beamed with the female equivalent of 'in an avuncular manner', "It's Samantha and Dee, isn't it? Yes! Congratulations on your upvotes, darlings! Will you be off to the after-conference mixer, then? I look forward to joining you, but I'm afraid I have been accosted by these two dear silly little doggies, what naughty little scamps they are, I wonder if we might just have a little word about dry cleaning costs…"
Dean cut straight to the chase. "Cut the crap, Crowley," he snarled, "What the hell are you playing at?"
Crowley produced an act of good-natured ignorance and earnest confusion that could've won an Oscar (or at least a very senior diplomatic position in an embassy somewhere). "No, dear, not quite, my name is 'Keely', although I understand that it's somewhat unusual… oh, goodness," the smile turned brittle for just a moment as one of the dogs gave the skirt another tug, "I do believe I heard a seam split…"
"You can call yourself the Maharajah of Swat, for all I care," Sam scowled, "But right now, you pull the plug on the bespelled doilies and stop whatever it is that you're doing to inspire women to kill each other – over voting about fanfiction stories? Was that seriously the best you could do?"
A brief flicker of calculation crossed the cross-dressing King of Hell's face as he decided on another tack. "Oh, yes, that's right, Rachel mentioned that you helped with the inspiration spell!" he said in a motherly tone. "You misunderstand, love, there's nothing being inspired there except for better writing…"
"You know, I'm always bein' told that I have no tolerance for delayed gratification," Dean mused, pulling the demon-killing knife from his boot and using it to push delicately and theatrically at an already immaculately trimmed cuticle. "Which I think is a fair thing, because delayed gratification has no place outside the bedroom. Or the spa. Or wherever you happen to be – now, Mistress Amanda from Nevada, there's a lady who understands the true place of delayed gratification…"
Sam elbowed his brother viciously.
"…But in this instance, I'm thinkin' that if you don't drop the Tootsie act right this fucking minute, and start de-mojoing those doilies and stop the killings and whatever the fuck else you're doing, then a bit of instant action will not be criticised." He gave Crowley his most winning smile. "I bet I could do more than unpick your seams with this, Your Majesty."
Crowley's eyes bugged as he stared at the knife, and then at the Winchesters. "Squirrel?" he asked in a voice dripping disbelief. "Is that… seriously?" He looked up at Sam. "Moose? Really?" He blinked. "It is you! Sam Winchester! I'd know that hair and that bitchy expression anywhere!" He turned his gaze on RJ. "Lucifer's bum, it's the Winchester sprog!"
"Assbu'!" yelled RJ, an adorably angry frown on his face as he hurled his spit-soaked knit toy at Crowley, hitting him in the considerable bust.
"Oh, yuck!" the King of Hell yipped, gingerly plucking the toy away as Dean snatched it back, "Oh, no, this is silk dupioni, you terrible tot, how am I supposed to get the mark out?" Then he looked down at the two dogs, who still had hold of his skirt, which was straining perilously at the waistband. "And your damned mutts!" he snapped, "I might've known! Only Squirrel Winchester would send a couple of practically-Hellhounds after me wearing Cockapoo suits!"
"Oh, you know that the outside don't make any difference to a dog of the Blood," Dean grinned, "I could turn 'em into Pomeranians, and they could still tear you apart."
"What the hell are you two doing running around getting in touch with your feminine sides?" Crowley demanded.
"We could ask you the same thing," Sam pointed out, "In fact, we are asking you."
"I suggest you start answering," Dean smiled brightly, waggling the knife. "Sam here is gettin' hormonal, I think she might have a PMS, and you don't wanna make her angry…"
"I do NOT have PMS!" protested Sam.
"I think actually you might, bro," Dean replied, "You've been eatin' a lot of chocolate stuff, and bein' even more emo than usual."
"Does Bobby know about this?" Crowley cut in. "Oh, he'll be so disappointed. He's always thought of you as the sons he never had, but he's such a darling, I'm sure that he'll accept you for whoever you decide you really are…"
"We are like this because we needed to go undercover for a Hunt," Sam growled at him, "Because women were attending Supernatural fan fiction writing conferences, and some of 'em were ending up dead. We had to find out how, and why, and stop it." He glared down at Crowley. "So we've worked out the how. But seriously, why?"
Crowley rolled his eyes like the most passive-aggressive teenager. "Becaaaause," he drawled, "I'm a deeeemon. That means, I do evil things. No, really."
Dean wasn't buying it. "But why the elaborate scheme? Why go to the trouble of setting up these conventions? I mean, there's gotta be a less complicated way to be evil."
"I like scheming!" Crowley snapped, "I'm the King of Hell, remember? But even I have to relax sometimes, have me-time. Some people knit, some people do jigsaw puzzles, some people build model railways, some people jump out of perfectly serviceable aeroplanes, I like to scheme! It's a hobby, all right? I have a very high-stress occupation, and I need to do something fun every once in a while!"
"But why this scheme?" Sam pressed, "It's a lot of effort, for, comparatively, little return."
"I just wanted to get out and do some old-fashioned moustache-twirling and 'bwa-ha-ha'ing!" snapped Crowley, swatting at the dogs.
"Well, you could probably nearly twirl the moustache," Dean observed, peering at Crowley's face. "I mean, you take a post-menopausal host, surely you coulda made time in your busy scheming schedule to take the wax pot to that top lip…"
"Who are you calling post-menopausal?" yapped Crowley, his hand flying to his lip.
"It just doesn't make sense," Sam went on, worrying at Crowley's motives like a terrier with a rat, "Yeah, even if you're the King of Hell, money means nothing to you, but with the kind of resources you have access to, you could scheme really grandly – but fan fiction? I mean, if you wanted to, you could get people to murder each other over really big, important things, not how popular somebody's stories are! It's just, it's just…" he eyed Crowley in bewilderment. "It's a bit, well, infra dig for the King of Hell, isn't it?" He cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. "Unless there's something else you're getting out of this."
"Maybe it's just jealousy," sniffed Dean disdainfully, "He just wants to build people up then tear 'em down, because nobody likes him."
"Envy," Crowley nodded in agreement, "It's a Capital Vice, a Deadly Sin. It's practically in my contract to commit the Seven Big Ones anytime, anyplace, anywhere. You should've seen me do Greed the other night, it could be the female body, but for some reason I was moved to eat nearly it's weight again in doughnuts…"
"No, he's not popular," Sam mused, frowning slightly.
Dean recognised the expression. "Oh, crap," he muttered.
"What?" snapped Crowley, making another futile effort to dislodge the dogs from his hemline.
"I recognise that expression," Dean intoned, "It means that Madam Emo here is Workin' Something Out."
"Popular writers," Sam's trail of thought twisted deeper into the landscape of Crowley's scheming, "You sent doilies home with the most popular writers. After working a spell to improve the conference's writing overall, which made one particular writer," he jerked a thumb at his brother, "Even more popular. But that was a dangerous spell – unstable, unanchored, and giving it a lot of juice for no specific target."
"Why can't people just acknowledge that I'm an evil bastard?" Crowley asked wistfully. "Why can't you just accept me for who I am?"
"I get a mental image of a hamster runnin' in a wheel, when he's thinkin' like this," Dean commented, watching his brother's face, "And from the expression now, I'd say that hamster just skolled another Red Bull."
"And the moment the spell was triggered, we went from being popular, to being very unpopular," Sam continued, "It was as if the popularity was suddenly just sucked right out of us, there and then. In which case, I gotta wonder," he eyed Crowley with amused speculation, "Where did the 'popular' suddenly go?"
Crowley drew himself to his full height, no mean feat for somebody shaped like a woman who didn't have so much a waist as a chest-height circumference. "I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Oh, I think you do," Sam grinned at him. "I had this totally wrong from the beginning, didn't I?" He shook his head ruefully. "I thought that women were being motivated to murder each other over bad writing, wasn't it? But bad writing had nothing to do with it, did it? It was just a means to an end. A way to proliferate… popularity."
Crowley sagged, and his face took on a defeated expression. It was the expression of a dog that, knowing that he is not allowed to dig in the potted plant in the corner of the living room, has done just that, with great enthusiasm and much enjoyment, only to realise that one of his humans has been standing in the room the whole time, and now, there will definitely be no treats.
"That was the backlash from the spell, wasn't it?" theorised Sam. "You might not have intended it, but that's what happened. You found a way to concentrate popularity into a few individuals, then you, you, you harvested it, and in that sudden complete anti-popularity afterwards, other conference-goers turned to murdering them. The murders were never your intention – they were just a side effect."
"Well, when it started happening, I thought of them as a happy coincidence," Crowley admitted sheepishly. "The icing on the cake, so to speak."
"Popularity?" Dean broke in. "He's, what, he's farming popularity at these things? Why? No amount of popularity will ever make the rest of Hell like you, Crowley, demons hate everybody except themselves, you of all demons should know… oh," a smile of understanding dawned on his face. "Oh."
"It isn't other demons he wants to be popular with," Sam chuckled as his brother caught on.
Crowley's face flushed beet red.
"Those Crobby fics were kind of poignant," he added.
"You're just a sad, sad guy, Crowley," sighed Dean. "And I can't believe you would think you would get away with it. I can't believe you would think it would work: an infinite number of fanfic authors at an infinite number of keyboards being upvoted by an infinite number of monkeys would never generate enough popularity to make Bobby be your BFF."
"Desperate morons will undertake desperate acts," shrugged Sam.
"And of course," Dean grinned from ear to ear, "When Bobby finds out what you've done this time, all in the name of tryin' to get him to like you, and be your friend…"
"You can't tell him!" Crowley shrieked, eyes bugging in horror! "You absolutely can NOT tell him! He'll hate me! He'll call me idjit! He'll call me asshat!" He let out a wail of misery. "His dogs will traumatise my clothing! Those gargoyles will strafe me! He'll shoot me with his Anti-Demon Rounds – he'll shoot me with sanctified dog poo!"
"And it will serve you right," Sam said casually, with no sympathy whatsoever.
"I'll stop the murders," Crowley said hurriedly, "We can make a deal, boys, ha ha ha, after all, it's what I do best, King of the Crossroads and all that, so, I stop the murders happening, and you don't tell Bobby, yes?"
"I aint makin' a deal with you," sneered Dean, "I am NOT kissin' you – I'll get mo rash!"
"But I might be prepared to make a deal," suggested Sam, the tone reminiscent of a DPP lawyer dangling a plea bargain in front of an offender on a felony, "If you are willing to stop trying to stockpile popularity – stop these conferences, stop performing the spell, and the murders will just stop, too."
Crowley gave Sam a long look. "If I agree to your terms, how do you propose to stop Miss January here blabbing?" he demanded.
"Oh, I'm not offering to keep this quiet from Bobby," Sam beamed sunnily, taking out his phone, "Because he'll find out. He'll want a debrief on this Hunt."
"Then you have nothing to offer, no bargaining power," Crowley snapped.
"Oh, but I think I do." Sam tapped at his phone, and turned it to show the matronly demon. "You see, if you do not stop these conferences, the spells, and hence the murders, immediately, I will summon a crossroads demon. And show it this picture." He held his phone out. "This lovely picture of the 'King of Hell', in demonic drag."
Crowley gazed at him steadily. "It's just a meatsuit, Jolly Green," he said carefully. "The outside of the vehicle isn't that important, it's what's under the hood and who's driving that counts."
"Yeah, that could be the case," Sam acknowledged. "Because if it really mattered, you might've chosen a 'vehicle' with more hair on the head to start with."
"And for this one, you might've picked one with less hair on its lip," added Dean, as Crowley let out a small yip of outrage.
"But, not only will I provide them with these high-def images," Sam tapped at the phone, displaying a string of text, "I will also give them… this."
"What is that?" asked Crowley dismissively, "Are you trying some techno-pagan working online? They can't get it to work, dear boy, Orgle's tried to explain it to me – something about the stability of the medium, virtual ley lines, zero-dimensional energies, and all manner of jargon – the message I took away from it is that if you try spell-casting over the internet, then all the electrons get so frightened they jump on their megacycles and ride away…"
"Oh, it isn't any spell," Sam beamed, "It's a link. To a site. To a fanfiction site. Where a person named 'Bobby's Bird' has written some lovely gen fics, heart-warming they are, about a grumpy old Hunter, well, he doesn't do too much actual Hunting any more, but he's a Man of Knowledge, and a demon, who's lonely at the top of a pile of shit, and against all odds, these two, this odd couple, this Felix and Oscar, this Tango and Cash, this Gimli and Legolas, they find they have more in common than they thought they did, they find common ground, and, incredibly, a friendship forms, and ultimately bromance blossoms…"
The expression of utter horror on Crowley's face was that of a reality TV wannabe being told that from now on people would not be allowed onto television unless they had already proven that they had a talent or they had something intelligent and worthwhile to say. "You… you wouldn't," he stuttered.
"Oh, he would," Dean beamed as widely as his brother.
"I've got 'em saved as pdfs, so they're easy to download," Sam added. "Just in case you were thinking of shutting down the conference servers. And the younger demons, they'll be able to read 'em on their iThings, I know how much they love their electronics…"
"You can't do that!" Crowley spluttered, "They'll, they'll…"
"Laugh at you?" suggested Dean in his most helpful tone. "Ridicule you? Look at you with even more contempt? Call you a Hunter's Pet? Generally think that maybe you aint such a hard case after all, you're just as soft and cuddly as your Uncle Crowley meatsuit looks?" He stared hard at Crowley. "Start thinkin' that perhaps you aint a fit and proper person to be runnin' Hell?"
"It's a good point," Sam nodded, "After all, entertaining fantasies about running off to Venice to check out a museum in the company of Bobby Singer probably constitutes some sort of violation of the Mission Statement, Vision Statement, Values and Code Of Conduct of Hell, all at once."
Crowley slumped with defeat, and glowered at them. "Words cannot express the deep, abiding, and murderous loathing I harbour for both of you," he muttered.
"Rest assured that the feeling is mutual," Dean assured him, "Even RJ hates you, right little guy?"
RJ blew a raspberry at Crowley, and then, without warning, wriggled in his father's arms, fingers twitching as he reached avidly for the King of Hell's magnificent bosom…
"Titi!"
"So, you've been warned, Miss Fearguson," said Dean, as Crowley let out a shriek and grabbed at his chest in pain, "Knock it off, and maybe Bobby won't put too many Anti-Demon rounds into you next time he sees you. Now, why don't you make like a good little vulture, and flock off?"
"Well, I would," Crowley said through clenched teeth, "But I am temporarily translocationally inconvenienced by having TWO COCKAPOO-ED PART HELLHOUNDS HANGING ON TO ME!"
Both dogs, eyes glowing fiery coal-red, still had their teeth embedded in Crowley's skirt, where they had been growling and yanking at the fabric since they'd sniffed him out and grabbed him.
It was a well-tailored outfit, but it was no match for two part-Hellhounds, even in Cockapoo suits.
There was a final, prolonged sound of splitting seams and tearing fabric as the skirt panelling separated from the waistband…
"Oh." Dean's eyebrows shot up. "Really, Crowley? Black lace?"
Clutching at his chest, his mangled skirt and the tattered remains of his shredded dignity, the King of Hell let out one final shriek, and disappeared.
Alfie-Con is turning into the home straight; go little plot bunny, go!