Disclaimer

Supernatural is a television series, created by Eric Kripke, produced by Kripke Enterprises, Wonderland Sound and Vision and Warner Bros. Television, distributed by Warner Bros. Television

The chapter begins in "Sacrifice" - season 8, episode 23 and goes through the beginning of season 9.

I used Monty Python's "Parrot Sketch". Not mine. And the line from Good Omens. Also not mine.

Chapter 7 – The story starts

The script was finished. The Scribe had won. Crowley's world crumbled. Even if the gates of Heaven were the ones being closed, not the gates of Hell, his world was into pieces. He was on the brink of becoming human again. Powerless, chained up, overwhelmed by feelings! He felt her disappear, felt the connection between them fade away. He had learned about the connection between a soul rescued from Hell and the angel who got it out, but he truly understood it only when it was gone.

Stupid, stupid angel! She let herself be killed. He had warned her and she just wouldn't listen!

But his survival instinct wouldn't let him wallow in feelings he neither wanted, nor was able to control. He had to fight for his life. The way she, the stupidest angel in all creation, had decided not to.

And Crowley fought. He bit Sam and used the blood to ask for help from his subjects. When Abaddon tried to kill him, he barely survived, but the brownie points he had earned with the Winchesters, kept him alive.

Crowley bided his time, chained to a chair, in the middle of a devil trap, in darkness and in silence. He had that one secret virtue. Patience. He would be out of his chains. His chance would come.

In the darkness of the Winchesters bunker, wherever that might have been, she came to him again.

"Hello Crowley."

Naomi.

He instantly recognized her voice, her presence, as in a dream, and yet as all the times they had been close. The human blood was messing with his mind even more than the trap and the magic manacles he was wearing with the grace of a fallen Christ.

"You're dead," he whispered. "All the other angels have fallen, but you're not among them. You are dead."

He wasn't looking at her but he heard the smile in her voice.

"I am not."

He shook his head stubbornly. Tears were coming to his eyes, caused by the pain of losing her and even more the self pity for losing his mind. He was even feeling the soul -to-angel connection that had been lost when she had died.

"I know I'm going crazy. You can't be here. Even if angels could become ghosts, you wouldn't haunt me. I never harmed you."

"Why do you think I'm dead?" she asked.

It was just like her, to sound calm and collected when making the supernatural equivalent of a conjugal visit. He was tempted to answer her, to tell her that he pieced things together from what he heard from the Winchesters and Castiel, to tell her that he felt her dying. No point debating with a hallucination. He based his rant on a Monty Python sketch that, had she been truly there, Naomi probably wouldn't have recognized.

"You have passed on. You are an angel no more. You are expired and gone to meet your maker. You are a stiff. Bereft of life. You rest in peace! You kicked the bucket. You shuffled off your feathery coil. Run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. YOU ARE AN EX ANGEL!"

"Why are you so sure?" she asked, the smile even more clearly audible in her voice.

"I felt you fade! YOU LET HIM KILL YOU!"

Naomi took pity on him. She lit a candle. He saw her, every bit as beautiful as he remembered. The shadows were playing across her face, in turns concealing and revealing her smile and her eyes.

Then she came closer. Oh, the hallucinations of the King were better than reality! His mind, the very mind that the real Naomi had considered perfect, was now broken. Was now lying to him. His beautiful mind was fooling all of his senses. Once the hallucination got close, he could smell her, and when she got closer still, when she reached out to touch him, he could feel her fingers tracing the fine lines around his eyes, tracing the contour of his lips. He felt her lips touch his forehead. And all the touches felt exactly like those from so long ago, when she had presented herself to him in mortal form. On the inside, Crowley was roaring with laughter at the irony of his madness – his broken mind was reminding him of the one time Naomi had allowed him power of life and death over her, while at that very moment, he was the powerless one.

"I wanted to thank you for the warning," she said, pressing her lips almost chastely against his temple.

"It was so completely characteristically chivalrous of you to do it," she said, kissing him properly. "The fact that it served your interests to have me alive and useful rather than dead and not useful does not change the fact that, in your way, you tried to help me."

Her words were alternated with teasing kisses. She was zeroing in on his mouth. By the time she reached the corner of his lips, he was squirming, willing himself to believe that she was not a figment of his imagination. That she was real.

"God helps those who help themselves," were the last words she said for a while.

Crowley allowed himself the pleasure of her touches. There was little choice, restrained as he was. The hallucination was frustratingly avoiding his mouth. For a while frustration kept building, having her straddling him, squirming in his lap, kissing him with mounting dare. All he was allowed to do was sniff her hair and brush his lips against her throat and shoulders when she was close enough to his mouth. The frustration reached a certain point when his flawless brain started to work again.

If she was created by his imagination, most of her behaviour was explainable. That was exactly how he had imagined her. Eager to learn his body with her mouth and her hands, but still timid at first. Still unsure of what she wanted or what she should do. With an immensity of knowledge at her disposal, she would seem virginal at their first sensual encounter.

The thing that irked him was why she wasn't kissing him on the mouth. He had imagined that first kiss more times than it was in keeping with his status as King of Hell. She was experimenting with a very pleasant way of nibbling at his earlobe when the truth became self evident. She wasn't kissing him on the mouth because that's how deals were sealed. Even without a soul, Naomi would never risk making a deal with him. The connection between them was so strong that a deal might occur just based on her unspoken desires. There was no literature on this subject –demonized souls being rescued from hell had never been documented to his knowledge.

"You're real," he said, exhaling the words along with a sigh.

"I told you so," she said, not pausing from what she was doing.

He started laughing. The sound was warm, the laughter was shaking his whole body, the entire room seemed to have lit up. She stood straight, and looked him in the eye with an inquiring expression. Crowley made sure he memorized every detail: she looked tousled, lips a bit swollen from kisses, bosom trembling from shallow, rapid breaths, cheeks reddened, and her eyes… there was no trace the blue irises. Her pupils were completely dilated.

"How? How did you survive?"

He should ask her to get him out of those chains. He should think carefully of the why. Why was she there. He should have thought about a lot of things and yet all he managed to do was to be happy that she was alive. And learning how she survived would prolong the momentary happiness.

He watched her relax. She pasted herself against his chest, resting her chin on his shoulder. Her lips were tickling the skin on his neck when she spoke.

"A trick. I barely managed to pull it off. I supressed my grace. They all thought I was dead. And I just let myself sliiiiide… from Heaven. You who love quoting the English humourists so much: I didn't so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards."

He laughed again. Naomi quoting Pratchett talking about Crawly. Priceless.

"I learned so much from you, my king," she whispered, her voice vibrating as his laughter shook them both. "Always so careful with the bodies you inhabit. You made me think differently. Following you for all those centuries… I managed to find this body. That can supress my very essence. For a while."

"I remember," he said, kissing her hair, above her temple, the best he could reach.

"I can't free you," she said, sitting up again.

Her eyes were blue again, but most of her appearance was still that of a cherub up to no good. He nodded, having expected this. If Naomi could have freed him, they wouldn't have spent a second more than necessary in this place. Not because she cared about him so much that she didn't want him to suffer, but because she wouldn't risk discovery and capture. So, it was time for the essential question. Why had she reveal to him that she was alive.

"Why are you here?"

She should have expected the question, but she looked surprised. Crowley was beginning to wonder if he missed something when he noticed that she was blushing and looking more and more embarrassed. What the… his mental exclamation was interrupted by her muttered reply.

"I want to know something."

"What?" he asked, shocked at the answer he had guessed.

"I want to know… what it feels like… to make love to you."

Brave little ex-angel. Muttered or not, her words were a truth so embarrassing that he knew no other angel who would admit it aloud.