Hearts Are Made Of Broken Glass 9/13 (Crowley, Castiel, Dean, rated PG-13)
Title: Hearts Are Made Of Broken Glass
Chapter:9/13
Author: pink_bagels
Genre: humour, drama
Pairing(s): Castiel/Crowley (eventually...kind of...), Dean/Crowley (eventually...kind of? o.O)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2539
Disclaimer: You kidding? I own nothing.
Warnings: Some spoilers for the seventh season and some deviation from canon at the end of the sixth.
Note: This story did go on hiatus for a number of months, but I do think I've mentioned I'm a stubborn completionist--there's more done offline, so it will be finished :) Hope you enjoy it!
Summary: Hell is no place for a brooding, guilty angel. So, Crowley sends Castiel on a crossroads mission. Big mistake.
HEARTS ARE MADE OF BROKEN GLASS-chapter nine
"You had absolutely no right! Do I have to hang up a bloody sign?" A furious Crowley beat at his chest with his fist. "No Tresspassing!"
Castiel fixed Crowley with a steely glare, the angel refusing to compromise. "On the contrary, it was imperative that I investigate, especially concerning the admission of an unworthy soul into heaven and your involvement. I found it unlikely an angel would consort with a demon, and from what I've discovered I was correct in that assumption."
Dean was still palming his jaw from where Crowley had hit him. He'd been shocked back into his body after both he and Castiel had been evicted, and before he could blink Crowley had balled up his fist and let him have it with as fast a right hook as he could muster. His knuckles still smarted a little from it, but it was Crowley's skull that was causing the most pain, the searing headache and sick feeling in his gut as much a symptom of a soul invasion as Bobby's rotgut hangover. "I thought it was just an ice cream," Dean said, again, and Crowley wished, with all he had in him, that he could transport his torture dungeon right here, right now, and let Dean Winchester know in no uncertain terms what he thought of that excuse.
"Look, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," Dean said. Bullocks, was this idiot really still talking? If he wasn't currently fighting the urge to spew a year's supply of Bobby's special brew, Crowley was sure Dean would be nothing more than a smouldering pile of grey ashes right now.
"It was an ice cream," Castiel corrected him.
"I know that, Cas," Dean said through clenched teeth.
"I don't understand. What do cigars have to do with anything?"
"I can't believe these words are actually leaving my mouth, but Crowley, I'm sorry, okay?" Dean replied, ignoring Castiel's still infuriating, questioning, slightly cocked to the right head. That stupid angel needed a bloody smashing! "It was an accident. I had no intention of doing anything even remotely...Look, let's just forget it, okay, it's not what any of this is about, and I'm not-I don't want to talk about it!"
"Good," Crowley said, nodding angrily at this. "Agreed."
"Then we're cool."
"No. Absolutely no measure or interpretation of 'cool' is happening between us. Ever."
"You don't have to be so damn dramatic, it was an honest mistake." Dean made a face as he furtively caught Crowley's steady glare. "Seriously, though...Vanilla?"
"Feck off!"
If he wanted to do more damage, it was going to be with an audience. Crowley inwardly groaned as Bobby and Sam ran their way down the basement stairs, the Sasquatch Winchester banging his head on an overhanging beam as he made his way down. He cursed a little over the new cut grazing his temple and he touched it with his fingertips as he marched ahead of Bobby to stand at his brother's side. "Dean, what the hell is going on? Bobby and I heard all this smashing and swearing, it was like a damn explosion down here!" He stopped short as he got a good look at Dean's current companion. "Cas? Oh my God, Cas, is that really you?" He stumbled forward only to stop himself, unsure of whether or not he was supposed to be happy or sad about this sudden reunion. Interesting, Crowley thought.
Bobby's contempt was obvious, or perhaps he had grown so used to angels coming back to life that seeing one that he didn't trust and didn't want to have much to do with in the first place didn't bother him the way it did his human companions. Besides, there were more important things crowding into Bobby's consciousness at present. Crowley could feel Bobby's ire behind him as the burly man looked on the wreckage of his seasoned moonshine bottles. He did feel a tad bad about that, and what little heart Crowley had felt a small tug at the sadness leaving Bobby's own soul as he put a voice to his loss. "Balls," Bobby muttered.
"I'll replace them," Crowley quickly promised him.
"Forget it. Had some of these bottles since I was sixteen and thirsty." Bobby smouldered beneath his baseball cap. "They won't be the same." He crossed his arms and stood beside Crowley, an unexpected ally against a trio of stupid. "What have you idjits done now?"
Leave it to the dumbwit Dean to tattle first. "Crowley has a soul." If he'd offered up the message in a sing-song voice it couldn't be more childish and irritating.
"A soul?" Bobby repeated, puzzled. He gave Crowley the same 'What now?' glare that he'd given his adopted Winchesters, and though he knew Bobby didn't have any special powers of any stripe that damn rotgut of his was doing all kinds of terrible things to Crowley's insides. He swallowed trying to keep it all together as Bobby asked "Whose?"
"His own," Castiel replied.
"Newsflash, he's a demon, he doesn't have one," Bobby stated. He turned his fierce, gruff scrutiny onto Crowley. "Right?"
Of course he wasn't going to answer, this was his existence they were talking about, and it was as precious and fragile as every one of those broken brown bottles that lay littered at thier feet. Crowley's reluctance to answer him said volumes, and the former King of Hell had his own response to Bobby's insistence. "Bullocks," he muttered.
"He not only has a soul, he arranged for a corrupted one to have access to heaven, possibly at the expense of his own ascension. I don't have all the details as to that transaction yet." Castiel set his jaw, working over the problem with confidence. "But I will soon."
"I don't get it, what does it matter?" Sam asked. He shrugged over the shocked silence, his bruised brow smarting him. He was the more intelligent of the brothers Grimm, and Crowley was sure with a little bit of prodding he'd figure it all out for himself before anyone had a chance to tell him. "If he's got a soul, then he's not really a full demon." There, just like that. A little more, Sasquatch Sam, Crowley thought, you can do it, I know those tiny gears are kicking in, giving a little inch there of insight, a little nudge here of background knowledge. He blinked his lazy, giant's eyes at Crowley, his face squinted into a tortured, confused pantomime of understanding. "He's not an angel. He's not a demon. He was human once. So...What does that make him? He's the King of Hell, so that means he has *something* to offer. I mean, Hell is considered a punishment, right? Someone has to meter that out...So...He's doing a job." Sam shook his head and Crowley was sure he could hear rocks beat against each other. "If he sent someone to Heaven he wasn't supposed to, and then descended to Hell instead, I'd say that was a self sacrifice. And that sacrifice had to be made to prove a point, so he had to know he was right." Sam's mouth twisted into a confused sneer. "What is he, some kind of perverted version of a Saint?"
"Bingo! Presto! Oh damned if this isn't the most exciting thing I've been a part of since the beginning of creation! I'm telling you, I had bets going on in my own mind about this being some crazy, mixed up game of Lucifer's, some mindfuck leftover on the corporeal plane to just screw with us, but to know that I'm standing here, right now, in a human *basement* of all places, not four feet away from a *martyr*! I mean, really, someone pinch me, I can't possibly have this kind of astonishing fortune!" Balthazar clapped his hands together, staring at the collection of people in Bobby's basement with a mixture of naked awe and incredulation. "A *martyr*! Incredible! Now things are really going to get wild!"
***
It was supposed to be an interrogation but Balthazar was ruining everything. He sat beside Castiel, who was doing his best to play Bad Cop and was failing miserably thanks to his old academy chum's constant exclamations. "The last time I hung out with martyrs I forgot my name, vomited onto a rack and watched one guy laugh his ass off while he had his limbs torn off by horses. I'm telling you, Cas, if you try to get a martyr to tell a lie, he'll chop off his own tongue, fry it, eat it in front of you and then give you his middle finger to lop off and take as a souvenir while he slowly bleeds to death to prove his point." Balthazar grinned as he pulled up a chair and set himself beside Castiel, giving himself a good front row seat with Crowley. "Tell me, my good fellow, do you know Aggie? Absolutely bonkers, she was, lopped her own tits off and served it to the king on a plate because she wouldn't return his amorous intentions, which is code for being him being a wanker. On a plate, like two fried eggs, sunny side up. Now *that's* what I call being a badass!"
"Balthazar, why are you still here?" Castiel gave his brother a withering glare. "You're supposed to be in Hell."
This, of course, piqued Crowley's interest, since while he wasn't exactly in love with the place, he did still feel a certain residual responsibility and he'd be damned if some angel was going to go in there and start messing with his desk. Which, sadly, is exactly what Balthazar had been doing.
"I'm all caught up, no worries," he said, perching his feet onto the edge of Bobby's desk. Crowley fought the urge to push them off. "A bit of an issue with those demons, though, they're thinking with no one reigning in Hell they've got a free ticket to anarchy. Bit dim, though, aren't they? If it were me, I'd be on the first elevator up heading for an impromtou promotion while the chaos was going on, but these things are just mindless little minions, nothing at all going on in the thought processes. You wouldn't believe the amount of sluts banging on that office door day and night, wanting to get some angel action, I mean really, it's quite embarassing on their part if you ask me. Not that I'm not obliging. But it does get tiresome, so I can see, Crowley, why you quit." Balthazar scraped the heel of his shoe on the corner of Bobby's desk. "I had to rearrange a bit of the decor as well. Bit depressing, all that pristine cleanliness, I'm more of an organic being. Just terrible, all those files and, you know, work. It's not my style. Contracts by the hundreds, every day, it's just a misery. Don't know how you do it, I can only get through a dozen or so before I'm bored off my perch. Myself, I just pick the thicker files at random and then shred the rest, it's better that way."
He gave Crowley a concentrated grin, and the former King of Hell longed to wipe it off his face. He was set to give him a good retort, but, as usual, Balthazar refused to let him get a word in. "I have to say, you aren't what I was expecting. Bit more brain than brawn, not like most of the martyrs I've partied with in the past. That little problem of yours? I'm the one who took care of that, seeing as how Cas is a bit banished upstairs at present. Real piece of nasty that putrid thing, couldn't stop confessing to me, and I have to say, you really did earn your stripes here, my good fellow. I chopped him up into stew sized chunks hoping you'd cook him proper, but you just took off and left him rotting in that burlap sack. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing your methods, but I'm just saying, it really puts a damper on the place, having this wiggling, moaning thing sitting in the middle of a torture chamber." Balthazar raised a brow and placed a thoughtful finger to his lips. "Though, perhaps you have a point there. It could be quite unnerving, having something just sitting there suffering and you can't quite identify what it is. Leaves plenty to the imagination. But, here is the rub, as I've said, demons are wickedly stupid. I don't think they'd understand that subtlety."
He was about to say much, much more, but Castiel put a stop on him, dragging him out of the office and into Bobby's kitchen, where a full on argument arose, one with Balthazar spewing as many words as he could in as short a period of time and Castiel offering single, fragmented sentences that were all facts and no emotion. Castiel's brother was an absolute nightmare of long winded diatribes, and it was clear that Castiel's quiet patience was the only thing that created a link between them.
Bobby entered the room, his arms crossed over his burly chest. Crowley reached into the bottom drawer of the desk and pulled out a surprise bottle of sambuca. He poured himself a shot and downed it, grimacing as the heat hit him. "Horrible stuff," he said, and Bobby nodded.
"I hear you got a bit of a rat problem," Bobby said.
Crowley hesitated before answering him. "You could say that."
"At least it's sitting in a burlap sack. Easy enough to get rid of."
"I imagine for you, it would be." Crowley sat back in his chair, keeping a sharp eye on the busy angels in the kitchen, Balthazar's mouth working so fast it was difficult to see his lips move. "Tell you what-If I give you a key to the place, do you mind cleaning up a bit for me? I wouldn't mind getting back to check on the wreckage, if only for old time's sake."
"Does this mean you're moving out of my basement?"
"After a good fumigation? Absolutely."
"Consider it a favour, not a deal." Bobby narrowed his eyes on Crowley. "Which means you owe me one. Like safe passage back."
Crowley rolled his eyes, hating the way Bobby Singer had learned how to read the fine print. He handed him a silver skeleton key, which the hunter took with caution. "Just lock up when you leave," Crowley warned him. "I wouldn't want anything finding its way out."
Chapter:9/13
Author: pink_bagels
Genre: humour, drama
Pairing(s): Castiel/Crowley (eventually...kind of...), Dean/Crowley (eventually...kind of? o.O)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2539
Disclaimer: You kidding? I own nothing.
Warnings: Some spoilers for the seventh season and some deviation from canon at the end of the sixth.
Note: This story did go on hiatus for a number of months, but I do think I've mentioned I'm a stubborn completionist--there's more done offline, so it will be finished :) Hope you enjoy it!
Summary: Hell is no place for a brooding, guilty angel. So, Crowley sends Castiel on a crossroads mission. Big mistake.
HEARTS ARE MADE OF BROKEN GLASS-chapter nine
"You had absolutely no right! Do I have to hang up a bloody sign?" A furious Crowley beat at his chest with his fist. "No Tresspassing!"
Castiel fixed Crowley with a steely glare, the angel refusing to compromise. "On the contrary, it was imperative that I investigate, especially concerning the admission of an unworthy soul into heaven and your involvement. I found it unlikely an angel would consort with a demon, and from what I've discovered I was correct in that assumption."
Dean was still palming his jaw from where Crowley had hit him. He'd been shocked back into his body after both he and Castiel had been evicted, and before he could blink Crowley had balled up his fist and let him have it with as fast a right hook as he could muster. His knuckles still smarted a little from it, but it was Crowley's skull that was causing the most pain, the searing headache and sick feeling in his gut as much a symptom of a soul invasion as Bobby's rotgut hangover. "I thought it was just an ice cream," Dean said, again, and Crowley wished, with all he had in him, that he could transport his torture dungeon right here, right now, and let Dean Winchester know in no uncertain terms what he thought of that excuse.
"Look, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," Dean said. Bullocks, was this idiot really still talking? If he wasn't currently fighting the urge to spew a year's supply of Bobby's special brew, Crowley was sure Dean would be nothing more than a smouldering pile of grey ashes right now.
"It was an ice cream," Castiel corrected him.
"I know that, Cas," Dean said through clenched teeth.
"I don't understand. What do cigars have to do with anything?"
"I can't believe these words are actually leaving my mouth, but Crowley, I'm sorry, okay?" Dean replied, ignoring Castiel's still infuriating, questioning, slightly cocked to the right head. That stupid angel needed a bloody smashing! "It was an accident. I had no intention of doing anything even remotely...Look, let's just forget it, okay, it's not what any of this is about, and I'm not-I don't want to talk about it!"
"Good," Crowley said, nodding angrily at this. "Agreed."
"Then we're cool."
"No. Absolutely no measure or interpretation of 'cool' is happening between us. Ever."
"You don't have to be so damn dramatic, it was an honest mistake." Dean made a face as he furtively caught Crowley's steady glare. "Seriously, though...Vanilla?"
"Feck off!"
If he wanted to do more damage, it was going to be with an audience. Crowley inwardly groaned as Bobby and Sam ran their way down the basement stairs, the Sasquatch Winchester banging his head on an overhanging beam as he made his way down. He cursed a little over the new cut grazing his temple and he touched it with his fingertips as he marched ahead of Bobby to stand at his brother's side. "Dean, what the hell is going on? Bobby and I heard all this smashing and swearing, it was like a damn explosion down here!" He stopped short as he got a good look at Dean's current companion. "Cas? Oh my God, Cas, is that really you?" He stumbled forward only to stop himself, unsure of whether or not he was supposed to be happy or sad about this sudden reunion. Interesting, Crowley thought.
Bobby's contempt was obvious, or perhaps he had grown so used to angels coming back to life that seeing one that he didn't trust and didn't want to have much to do with in the first place didn't bother him the way it did his human companions. Besides, there were more important things crowding into Bobby's consciousness at present. Crowley could feel Bobby's ire behind him as the burly man looked on the wreckage of his seasoned moonshine bottles. He did feel a tad bad about that, and what little heart Crowley had felt a small tug at the sadness leaving Bobby's own soul as he put a voice to his loss. "Balls," Bobby muttered.
"I'll replace them," Crowley quickly promised him.
"Forget it. Had some of these bottles since I was sixteen and thirsty." Bobby smouldered beneath his baseball cap. "They won't be the same." He crossed his arms and stood beside Crowley, an unexpected ally against a trio of stupid. "What have you idjits done now?"
Leave it to the dumbwit Dean to tattle first. "Crowley has a soul." If he'd offered up the message in a sing-song voice it couldn't be more childish and irritating.
"A soul?" Bobby repeated, puzzled. He gave Crowley the same 'What now?' glare that he'd given his adopted Winchesters, and though he knew Bobby didn't have any special powers of any stripe that damn rotgut of his was doing all kinds of terrible things to Crowley's insides. He swallowed trying to keep it all together as Bobby asked "Whose?"
"His own," Castiel replied.
"Newsflash, he's a demon, he doesn't have one," Bobby stated. He turned his fierce, gruff scrutiny onto Crowley. "Right?"
Of course he wasn't going to answer, this was his existence they were talking about, and it was as precious and fragile as every one of those broken brown bottles that lay littered at thier feet. Crowley's reluctance to answer him said volumes, and the former King of Hell had his own response to Bobby's insistence. "Bullocks," he muttered.
"He not only has a soul, he arranged for a corrupted one to have access to heaven, possibly at the expense of his own ascension. I don't have all the details as to that transaction yet." Castiel set his jaw, working over the problem with confidence. "But I will soon."
"I don't get it, what does it matter?" Sam asked. He shrugged over the shocked silence, his bruised brow smarting him. He was the more intelligent of the brothers Grimm, and Crowley was sure with a little bit of prodding he'd figure it all out for himself before anyone had a chance to tell him. "If he's got a soul, then he's not really a full demon." There, just like that. A little more, Sasquatch Sam, Crowley thought, you can do it, I know those tiny gears are kicking in, giving a little inch there of insight, a little nudge here of background knowledge. He blinked his lazy, giant's eyes at Crowley, his face squinted into a tortured, confused pantomime of understanding. "He's not an angel. He's not a demon. He was human once. So...What does that make him? He's the King of Hell, so that means he has *something* to offer. I mean, Hell is considered a punishment, right? Someone has to meter that out...So...He's doing a job." Sam shook his head and Crowley was sure he could hear rocks beat against each other. "If he sent someone to Heaven he wasn't supposed to, and then descended to Hell instead, I'd say that was a self sacrifice. And that sacrifice had to be made to prove a point, so he had to know he was right." Sam's mouth twisted into a confused sneer. "What is he, some kind of perverted version of a Saint?"
"Bingo! Presto! Oh damned if this isn't the most exciting thing I've been a part of since the beginning of creation! I'm telling you, I had bets going on in my own mind about this being some crazy, mixed up game of Lucifer's, some mindfuck leftover on the corporeal plane to just screw with us, but to know that I'm standing here, right now, in a human *basement* of all places, not four feet away from a *martyr*! I mean, really, someone pinch me, I can't possibly have this kind of astonishing fortune!" Balthazar clapped his hands together, staring at the collection of people in Bobby's basement with a mixture of naked awe and incredulation. "A *martyr*! Incredible! Now things are really going to get wild!"
***
It was supposed to be an interrogation but Balthazar was ruining everything. He sat beside Castiel, who was doing his best to play Bad Cop and was failing miserably thanks to his old academy chum's constant exclamations. "The last time I hung out with martyrs I forgot my name, vomited onto a rack and watched one guy laugh his ass off while he had his limbs torn off by horses. I'm telling you, Cas, if you try to get a martyr to tell a lie, he'll chop off his own tongue, fry it, eat it in front of you and then give you his middle finger to lop off and take as a souvenir while he slowly bleeds to death to prove his point." Balthazar grinned as he pulled up a chair and set himself beside Castiel, giving himself a good front row seat with Crowley. "Tell me, my good fellow, do you know Aggie? Absolutely bonkers, she was, lopped her own tits off and served it to the king on a plate because she wouldn't return his amorous intentions, which is code for being him being a wanker. On a plate, like two fried eggs, sunny side up. Now *that's* what I call being a badass!"
"Balthazar, why are you still here?" Castiel gave his brother a withering glare. "You're supposed to be in Hell."
This, of course, piqued Crowley's interest, since while he wasn't exactly in love with the place, he did still feel a certain residual responsibility and he'd be damned if some angel was going to go in there and start messing with his desk. Which, sadly, is exactly what Balthazar had been doing.
"I'm all caught up, no worries," he said, perching his feet onto the edge of Bobby's desk. Crowley fought the urge to push them off. "A bit of an issue with those demons, though, they're thinking with no one reigning in Hell they've got a free ticket to anarchy. Bit dim, though, aren't they? If it were me, I'd be on the first elevator up heading for an impromtou promotion while the chaos was going on, but these things are just mindless little minions, nothing at all going on in the thought processes. You wouldn't believe the amount of sluts banging on that office door day and night, wanting to get some angel action, I mean really, it's quite embarassing on their part if you ask me. Not that I'm not obliging. But it does get tiresome, so I can see, Crowley, why you quit." Balthazar scraped the heel of his shoe on the corner of Bobby's desk. "I had to rearrange a bit of the decor as well. Bit depressing, all that pristine cleanliness, I'm more of an organic being. Just terrible, all those files and, you know, work. It's not my style. Contracts by the hundreds, every day, it's just a misery. Don't know how you do it, I can only get through a dozen or so before I'm bored off my perch. Myself, I just pick the thicker files at random and then shred the rest, it's better that way."
He gave Crowley a concentrated grin, and the former King of Hell longed to wipe it off his face. He was set to give him a good retort, but, as usual, Balthazar refused to let him get a word in. "I have to say, you aren't what I was expecting. Bit more brain than brawn, not like most of the martyrs I've partied with in the past. That little problem of yours? I'm the one who took care of that, seeing as how Cas is a bit banished upstairs at present. Real piece of nasty that putrid thing, couldn't stop confessing to me, and I have to say, you really did earn your stripes here, my good fellow. I chopped him up into stew sized chunks hoping you'd cook him proper, but you just took off and left him rotting in that burlap sack. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing your methods, but I'm just saying, it really puts a damper on the place, having this wiggling, moaning thing sitting in the middle of a torture chamber." Balthazar raised a brow and placed a thoughtful finger to his lips. "Though, perhaps you have a point there. It could be quite unnerving, having something just sitting there suffering and you can't quite identify what it is. Leaves plenty to the imagination. But, here is the rub, as I've said, demons are wickedly stupid. I don't think they'd understand that subtlety."
He was about to say much, much more, but Castiel put a stop on him, dragging him out of the office and into Bobby's kitchen, where a full on argument arose, one with Balthazar spewing as many words as he could in as short a period of time and Castiel offering single, fragmented sentences that were all facts and no emotion. Castiel's brother was an absolute nightmare of long winded diatribes, and it was clear that Castiel's quiet patience was the only thing that created a link between them.
Bobby entered the room, his arms crossed over his burly chest. Crowley reached into the bottom drawer of the desk and pulled out a surprise bottle of sambuca. He poured himself a shot and downed it, grimacing as the heat hit him. "Horrible stuff," he said, and Bobby nodded.
"I hear you got a bit of a rat problem," Bobby said.
Crowley hesitated before answering him. "You could say that."
"At least it's sitting in a burlap sack. Easy enough to get rid of."
"I imagine for you, it would be." Crowley sat back in his chair, keeping a sharp eye on the busy angels in the kitchen, Balthazar's mouth working so fast it was difficult to see his lips move. "Tell you what-If I give you a key to the place, do you mind cleaning up a bit for me? I wouldn't mind getting back to check on the wreckage, if only for old time's sake."
"Does this mean you're moving out of my basement?"
"After a good fumigation? Absolutely."
"Consider it a favour, not a deal." Bobby narrowed his eyes on Crowley. "Which means you owe me one. Like safe passage back."
Crowley rolled his eyes, hating the way Bobby Singer had learned how to read the fine print. He handed him a silver skeleton key, which the hunter took with caution. "Just lock up when you leave," Crowley warned him. "I wouldn't want anything finding its way out."