HEATHCLIFF STUDIOS - STUDIO 1B - LATE AFTERNOON
In the dark - and this was somehow the pitchest of pitch dark - Balthazar felt Crowley pull away from him. The house lights came back on and he was alone on the stage. The demons or monsters had cleared out. No Raphael. And Crowley was nowhere to be seen. Which was weird, because there was no teleporting on studio grounds...
There was a last round of applause from the audience, but the zealots had turned and were making their displeasure known. Balthazar jumped to his feet and as he did, he noticed something about the ground under him. It was hollow. A trap door? And not the only one. And just then, too quiet and distant for the humans to hear over their cheering and booing, there came the sound of a car peeling away from the studio. It took him a moment, but he put it all together eventually.
He'd been set up.
Furious, he jogged off stage and out of the building, ready to do... something violent. It was raining buckets outside now. Funny how the weather at the studio had turned for the worse the last few days...
THE PENTHOUSE - EVENING
It took him a while to get back to the highrise, back to the penthouse, and was drenched by the time he did. When he got there, Crowley's door was open. The HiFi was booming, just like he knew it would be. 'Chain of Fools.' No one could say he didn't have a sense of humor.
Balthazar stormed into the room, fuming. "You slag," he growled.
Someone was sitting at the desk, back to the door, laptop open. Drinking whiskey and commenting on youtube videos like a dick.
"Balthazar," Crowley said, his voice all merry and insouciant. He did a nice dramatic spin around in his chair, smiling and relaxed. He'd had plenty of time to change before now but hadn't bothered, figuring this would be more fun in costume. Took in Balthazar's appearance. "I told you to lay off the cheap grapefruits."
"You played me!" he barked, losing his cool. Closing in on Crowley.
"I'm just as surprised as you are." He said it like he was marveling at Balthazar's stupidity. "Did you really believe Raphael could get a laugh without me writing his jokes? Please."
Balthazar winced, quietly furious with himself. That should've been a dead giveaway.
"Hey, this was your idea," Crowley said. "Remember? 'An angel who's not so good and a demon who's not so bad'? Compellingly written by yours truly. And the performance? Devastating. Your heart just goes out to the poor bastard. Finally letting himself fall in love and-."
"I never betrayed you," Balthazar said, wanting to believe it.
Crowley's eyes took on a sort of inscrutable distance. He stood up and faced Balthazar. Level. Calm. Dangerous. "According to what? Our contract? The same one that let me Lorena the Bobbit out of you back there?"
Balthazar looked sick. He knew he wasn't going to lose a dictionary dance with the King of the Crossroads. "Then what happens now? Smite me? You still have the Redneck Comedy Tour to consider."
Ah. The Winchesters were coming. Not the best time to be divided.
Crowley waved it off with his drink. "Don't exaggerate. This is only sauce for the gander."
"How much sauce?" Balthazar asked wearily.
"Till I say 'when.' There are no exits now, pooh bear, it's you and me – the grand circle tour, screaming into forever. Mayhaps going steady with the King of Hell after treating his frontal lobes like a CapriSun for three years was a dumb idea, actually. The more you know."
Now that the pinch of all this was wearing off, Balthazar was starting to simmer down into annoyance. Emotionally speaking, he was worn right out. "May I ask just who ratted me out?"
One corner of Crowley's mouth curled up into a cartoonish smirk. These were the moments he liked to savor. "You did."
GREENHOUSE - EARLY THAT MORNING - FLASHBACK
(Wait, flashback? Oh! See, slug lines are helpful!)
So right about sunrise, Raphael returned to the rooftop, as always. This was a mild-mannered Raphael, graceless for years and oddly happier for it. He still dressed smartly, if a bit more practically, with a very nice black Pendleton sweater and slacks. Like Castiel, the whole situation of involuntary mortality that Crowley and Balthazar thrust on him seemed to have the effect of making him seem more... nerdly.
In a while, he'd be tending to his roses, but breakfast always came first. Pushing his tea cart, he opened the greenhouse door and got hit in the face with a cloud of doobie smoke. Good lord, not again. He left the door open to air the place out and wheeled himself in. Crowley was unconscious, having passed out drunk on the couch in front of his notes. Raphael grumbled to himself.
This is what a godless universe looked like.
He poured out his first cup, plated a croissant, and sat in his usual spot, only now he was beside Crowley. Close enough to read what he'd been writing. Not that he ever helped himself to things that weren't his business. But what was that about an archangel? Suddenly their stupid little television show was mildly interesting.
He turned to Crowley, "Demon?" Crowley didn't move so Raphael started snapping his fingers by ear. "Demon."
Annoyed, Crowley let out a noise. "What? The bloody hell are you doing in here?"
"Which archangel?" Raphael asked, not about to let his go.
It took Crowley a minute to put it all together. "Not a real one," he said as if to reassure him, "an abstraction."
Raphael frowned thoughtfully for a moment. "So... Gabriel?" he asked, dead serious.
Crowley snickered under his breath. Raphael may not have had a sense of humor but he could be unintentionally hilarious sometimes. Crowley sat up, lazily looking over his notes while Raphael enjoyed his tea. For like, thirty seconds.
"Who would play him?" he asked.
Crowley stopped and glared at him; he knew where this was going. Anyway. He looked at the notes again and saw something weird in it: the lyrics to 'Gloria,' rewritten to be about Daria. It was funny, and he was sure he'd thought it was genius last night, but completely unhelpful now. Le Sigh. He hit rewind on the tape recorder.
THE PENTHOUSE - EVENING
"Pro-tip," Crowley said. "Next time you try to trick me into kinging your way out of total not-betrayal while I'm spring-boarding a script? Turn off my tape recorder."
Oh... Well! That was all the self-inflicted defeat and humiliation Balthazar could take. He closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands. Sighed. His voice came muffled but clear enough. "I'm very stupid."
"Uh-huh." Crowley stepped in closer, grinning ear to ear now. He took Balthazar's hands down gently. "And what does that say about me?" Bedroom eyes. Breathy whisper.
It took Balthazar completely by surprise. He was astonished, in spite of himself, that this hadn't ended with Crowley ripping his entire ass off, let alone flirting. All those years of reading his mind and he was still no closer to understanding him. "You're completely bonkers," he said.
"Love makes a man do strange things..." He said it like it was a joke. He began hiking the front of Balthazar's shirt up. It was still all wet and clingy from the rain. "Oh, my. And this one's your hero costume, too." He clicked his tongue. Shame. "Really should go back to wardrobe."
Still frowning, still confused, Balthazar smiled, starting to catch up with all the insanity. Almost laughing. "I thought we were saucing my gander."
Crowley shrugged. "I've got all kinds of sauce under the bed. Good for a goose, too, just FYI... Care to renegociate?"
"Well, I'll have to think about that." He closed his jacket, covering himself teasingly. (Is that a word? *googles it* Yes!) "Maybe I'm happy where I am. What does a 'Knight of Hell' do?"
"Let's see," Crowley muttered under his breath, pretending to recall the job description, "the windows, the drapes, extremes of ecstasy that can't even scream-. And something about 'garmonbozia,' I can't remember the details."
Balthazar threw open his jacket with all the flare of a stripper and tossed it wherever. But he narrowed his eyes at Crowley. "Did you mean anything you said back there?"
Just like that, all of Crowley's swagger glitched out. His eyes were elsewhere. "You know, I should be chewing through your larynx right now. Out of all the things that need kinging around here, you're at the bottom of the list, so get to devil-petting already. My patience wears thin."
Crowley downed his drink in one, wandered to his bed, set the class on the nightstand, and sat down. Then he finally looked back at Balthazar, who had followed at a respectful distance. His expression had barely changed. A little sympathy, with a touch of calling bull.
Crowley feigned annoyance. "Ohhh, congratulations, Kreskin, you finally figured out what I'm thinking. The sun even shines on a dog's ass!" Balthazar kept on looking, his expression the same. Crowley drew a breath, looking... scared? Like he wanted to say something but he shouldn't. "This is a better class of problem than I'm used to, alright?"
Balthazar sat next to Crowley, shoulder to shoulder, and gave him a tender kiss on the cheek. "I really do love you, Mignon. All my life, I've only ever loved one person. And I felt that... knight in shining armor thing, too. I wanted it to be real. To be the one you needed. Handle things on my own. But I'm not any good on my own. I'm too easily tempted."
Crowley turned and placed a hand on Balthazar's cheek with a pained expression. "I knooow," he whined, in a tone that suggested it was what he loved most about Balthazar.
"Is this going to be one of those things where you need time and space?" he asked.
Crowley smiled, thinking something was funny. "What, like... a mature, healthy relationship? Between two consenting adults of sound mind and body? Are you high? 'Time and space.' What the hell kind of boring-ass knitting circle of a romance do you think this is? I mean, bring a book."
They both seemed to think that was a little absurd. "I meant Time and Space in a sci-fi way," Balthazar said, and peeled off his wet shirt.
"You bloody well better have."