Drowley - Blog Posts

DAY 7: The Heart of a Demon

The heart of a demon, willingly given, is a powerful weapon for the one who wields it.

I hated that Crowley got so little recognition after his death from the Winchesters. Obviously with Cas dead he wasn't going to be the priority but even in death he's the second choice. It makes me want to scream. He deserved so much better. There will be a second chapter to this story because I didn't have time to write the ending and I won't have time until tonight. Fandom : Supernatural Character(s): Crowley Relationship(s) : Crowley & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Crowley/Dean Winchester Words Count: 3,060 Trigger Warnings : - Suicidal Thoughts - Implied Future Self-Sacrifice - Stabbing No. 7: ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES Unconventional Weapon | Magic with a Cost | "It's us or them."

“Yeah, but not our kind of weird. Look, whatever this thing is gonna be, it's gonna be big and bad–”

Crowley couldn't help but appreciate the irony of the situation. 

He materialized inside the library, the Winchesters still trusted him enough, even implicitly, to include him in the Bunker's wards. That would change, of course, now that they realized he'd let Lucifer out of the Cage but the trust and… companionship had been nice while it lasted.

“You rang?” Crowley smirked. “Hello, boys.”

Dean's reaction was immediate, not that Crowley expected anything else from him. He was so predictable sometimes, to Crowley at least.

“Did you do it? Did you let Lucifer out?!”

Dean’s voice was thunderous, shaking with rage and betrayal, and a cold blade was at his throat before he even hit the ground, his nose broken by Dean’s punch.

“I didn’t ‘let’—”

Crowley tried to justify himself but Dean immediately cut him off, shaking him roughly by the collar of his suit, seeing through his lies, as usual. Seeing that he couldn't get anything out of Dean, Crowley turned to Sam, hoping that his logical mind could cut through Dean's anger.

"Moose, a little help here!" Sam sighed, stepping towards his brother.

"Dean, wait."

"Seriously?"

The surprise was apparent to both mother and son, and while Crowley didn’t give a damn about Mama Winchester’s opinion of him, Dean’s reaction hurted where it shouldn’t have. He and Dean had tried to kill each other for years, but Crowley had come to see those interactions as foreplay.

Today, Dean could have plunged his knife into Crowley’s heart without thinking twice. And Crowley probably would have let him do it if he didn’t have a mission.

Still, Dean’s hands loosened around his neck. But not for Crowley’s sake, for Sam’s.

“Look, just don't kill him. He worked the Cage spell with Rowena. Maybe he can help us,” Sam explained.

“And what if he can't?” Mary asked skeptically.

“Well, then we kill him,” Sam replied.

Crowley stood up and dusted nonexistent specks off his jacket, ignoring the death threats and mimicking the Winchesters’ disdain and nonchalance.

“Cage spell? Thought you had Mother for that.”

Crowley tried not to be petulant in his bitterness. His relationship with the Winchesters was strictly professional, sworn enemies or tentative alliance. No hard feelings. Except—

“Rowena’s dead,” Dean announced calmly, coldly .

Would he talk about Crowley’s death the same way if that happened? Probably, they might have been more one day, but at the end of the day, Dean would only keep him around for as long as he was useful.

“Really?”

Mother was a bitch but she was a tenacious bitch, a survivor . Crowley had a hard time believing she would die so easily. He himself was currently assumed dead by everyone except the Winchesters.

"Yeah, really. Lucifer ," Sam replied.

Sam was tired but the venom in his voice at the mention of Lucifer was deadly. Few people hated the Devil with such force and they were all in this room.

"Funny. I always thought I'd be the one to kill her," Crowley said, keeping his voice steady and avoiding Dean's gaze.

Crowley didn’t know what to think. He had hated his mother most of his life, both of his lives, and yet for a moment, he had truly believed that they could be… family . But now was not the time to assess his complex feelings toward his blood.

(A wise man once told me family don’t end in blood, but it doesn’t start there either. Family cares about you, not what you can do for them. Family’s there through the good, bad, all of it. They got your back even when it hurts. That’s family.)

“Crowley...why did you do it? Save Lucifer,” Sam asked. “What did you want?”

Crowley didn't know what he had expected when he went to the Bunker. But certainly not Dean attacking him without even being able to meet his gaze in his anger and Sam hearing his reasons, giving him a chance to explain himself.

"I wanted to win," Crowley seethed, humiliation and anger still deeply rooted in his mind. "I perverted Mother's spell, put Lucifer in a vessel of my own making because I wanted to win ."

It wasn't a feeling the Winchesters could understand, they had fought all their lives for others. But Crowley was a demon , he fought for himself and himself only (not anymore) and for cockroaches like Lucifer to think they could take the fruits of his hard work was infuriating.

“You have any idea how many people have made a play for my throne over the years? Lucifer, Abaddon, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Too damn many,” Crowley snapped angrily. “I thought if I could put the Devil on a leash... my own personal nuke, no one would ever dare challenge me again.” 

“Yeah, that worked out great ,” Dean scoffed.

Crowley couldn’t deny it considering how he’d narrowly escaped death. But it had given him time to think about what was truly important. His throne wasn’t even in the top ten.

“Wait. In an actual rat?” Mary asked.

“Wasn't too bad, really,” Crowley replied, never one to refute his own mistakes. “Gave me time to think. You know, I've been focused for so long on keeping my job. Never realized I hate it. All those whining demons, the endless moan of damned souls, the paperwork! I mean, who wants that?”

The Winchesters didn’t seem very sympathetic to his introspection.

“You,” Sam replied, impassive.

He should have know that they were going to be little shits about it.

“Once, maybe,” Crowley replied dismissively.

“So why are you here?” Sam insisted impatiently.

“Well, whenever there's a world-ending crisis at hand, I know where to place my bets,” Crowley replied, smirking. “It's on you, you big, beautiful, lumbering piles of flannel. So if you'll forgive my transgression, I'll make it worth your while.”

Dean straightened up from the table he was leaning against, addressing Crowley for the first time since he’d tried to kill him. Which, by the way, was still incredibly rude .

“Which means?”

“After we put Lucifer back in his cage, together, I'll seal the gates of Hell. You'll never see another demon again, apart from, of course, yours truly.”

Crowley knew they would accept. Even if the semblance of trust between them had been destroyed, the Winchesters had once fought, almost to the death, to close the Gates of Hell. And their greatest obstacle at the time was offering to finish the job for them.

(Crowley winced as he remembered what he’d revealed in that church, to Sam and to himself. He hadn’t been the same since, he hadn’t been the Winchesters’ enemy since.)

“You would do that?” Mary asked skeptically.

“Why not? They stab me in the back, I'll happily stab them in the front, the sides, and right up their little black-eyed asses,” Crowley replied viciously. “So... we have a deal?”

Crowley met Dean's gaze for the first time. Everyone had their own motivation, sense of duty, greed for power, need for love or dear old spite. The Winchesters didn't need to know which one drove Crowley.

(Maybe he would tell them if he knew himself.)

Dean nodded slightly in his direction. Everyone collectively let out a breath.

"Alright," Sam decided. "We still have to find Cas and Kelly."

The Winchesters sat back down around the table and pulled out their laptops, leaving Crowley standing alone at the end of the table. There was a seat next to Dean but it wasn't for Crowley, it never would be despite what Crowley had once thought they had.

The Winchesters clearly didn't need nor wanted his help, otherwise they would have already requested his assistance, with more or less threats depending on their mood. Given the stiffness of Dean's shoulders, they wouldn't have been very polite.

Crowley could have snapped his fingers to summon a glass of scotch but he preferred to advance to the bar in a corner of the room, his leather shoes echoing against the library floor. He opened the precious wood cabinet and, still in its place, was a bottle of his favorite brand.

Crowley poured himself a glass, the amber liquid appearing almost like liquid gold in the dim lighting of the room. He returned to the table and sat down, the glass in his hand. At the head of the table.

"This is what you do when I'm not here? Type?" Crowley asked after a few moments of silence, an inquisitive eyebrow raised.

At least when he was King, he could order his minions to do the boring work for him.

"Yep," Dean replied without looking up from his phone.

"Wait a second. I got something," Sam interrupted. "Okay, two hours ago, there was a massive power outage in the Pacific Northwest."

"Sounds like the right kind of weird," Mary conceded, glancing at the article on her son's computer.

"Oh, yeah. Wait. They tracked the outage to an address in North Cove, Washington, to a house currently being rented by one James Novak ," Sam continued, emphasizing the last few words.

Only a few people in the world knew the importance of that name, but with an alias like that, Cas was practically begging the Winchesters to find him. Even Crowley knew that.

"It's Cas. Let's roll," Dean decided.

"It’s about time," Crowley said, standing up to follow the Winchesters.

Faster than Crowley could register, Dean stabbed Crowley's hand with his knife, pinning him to the table. A flash of gold illuminated the bones in his hand for a second and Crowley cried out in pain as his blood spilled onto the table.

"Think we're gonna trust you out there after what you pulled? Hmm? No ," Dean snapped, his green eyes deeper than the lushest forests, blazing with anger. "You stay here, sit down, and you shut up."

Dean twisted the knife in the wound for good measure before walking away, leaving Crowley alone. Great, now he was going to have to rip his hand off before he could leave.

Asshole .

XXX

Dean, as usual, was the first to notice.

"Oh, come on!"

"Hello, boys. Again ," Crowley greeted.

"Wait a second," Sam asked, "how the hell did you—?"

Crowley held up his bloody, bandaged hand from where he had — painfully, he might add —pulled out the knife.

"I improvised. Lucky I did. Turns out I'm the answer to all your problems."

Dean groaned in frustration, throwing his hands up in the air in defeat. “It's impossible to get rid of you, you're like a cockroach!”

“Now that we've all come to the same conclusion, maybe we could stop wasting time?” Crowley suggested with a saccharine smile.

Crowley didn't wait for Cas or the Winchesters to answer and headed towards the house. This isn't where Crowley would have imagined the birth of the Antichrist, more on an altar made of skulls and blood, but the Winchesters never did anything like everyone else.

Including rifts through space and time to an apocalyptic world.

Luckily for Chip and Dale, Crowley didn't do ordinary things either. And in theory, he knew a spell that could close the rift, preferably with Lucifer on the other side. In theory.

When they arrived a few minutes later, Crowley was already seated at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. (There was no alcohol in the cupboards, he had checked.) Cas glared at him for invading his space. Cas stayed by the door, Sam positioned as a barrier between him and Dean.

Crowley smiled viciously as Dean took the chair next to him. It seemed he wasn’t the only one in Dean’s bad graces.

“I’m going to check on Kelly,” Cas mumbled, glancing at Dean one last time.

“So what’s your plan?” Sam asked, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.

“I know a spell that could close the rift,” Crowley explained. “And with Lucifer a few hours behind you–”

“We could lure him into the other dimension and close the door on him,” Dean realized, a glimmer of hope lighting his eyes for the first time.

Dean had a way to fight, to resist. It was enough for him for now. He smiled at Crowley, as if the betrayals and anger had never come between them. Crowley let himself believe for a moment that this was a recurring occasion and not a rare memory.

"What do you need for the spell?" Sam asked, searching the kitchen for a piece of paper.

"Nothing I can't find in your little Bunker," Crowley replied, standing. "Be back in five."

When Dean reached for him, Crowley quickly removed his hands from the table and hid them behind his back. Stab me once—

Dean gave him a strange look as his hand came to rest on Crowley's shoulder to stop him in his tracks. "I'm coming with you."

"You still don't trust me?" Crowley asked, his bandaged hand resting on his chest, pretending to be hurt. “You wound me so, Squirrel.”

“Stop talking so much,” Dean complained.

Taking Dean to the Bunker took more energy than he would have normally used, but considering he hadn't planned on surviving the night, Crowley didn't care.

"All that to get back here," Crowley remarked as he arrived. "It would have been quicker if you hadn't stabbed me in the first place."

"If you want an apology, Crowley, you're not getting one," Dean replied.

Now that they were alone, Dean couldn't hide behind his brother and mother to mask his anger at Crowley. But anger was good, it was better than the cruel and indifferent apathy of Lucifer or his mother.

To be angry was to feel .

"You're not the least bit sorry?" Crowley insisted.

A stab in the hand was nothing. It was the proof that Dean didn’t want him around, didn’t trust him, that hurted him.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re not exactly trustworthy,” Dean retorted.

“You always knew who I was, and yet you used to trust me,” Crowley pointed out. “What changed?”

Crowley knew what had changed, Dean thought Crowley had reformed, that he wasn’t the demon he once was. Because Dean Winchester could never love a demon, could never love who he was.

Crowley wasn’t enough .

But he wanted to hear Dean tell him. If he couldn’t have love, he would have the truth. He wanted to know if the man in front of him was worth dying for.

Dean turned on his heel, not wanting to hurt Crowley or caring enough to answer him.

“What do you need? We don’t have much time and I don’t want to leave Sam, Mom, and Cas alone for too long,” Dean asked, his back turned.

“Holy oil,” Crowley answered without missing a beat, as if their conversation never happened.

(Crowley didn’t even deserve the truth.)

(The answer was yes .)

Dean left Crowley to search for the rest of the ingredients alone and Crowley wandered through the Bunker, past Cas’s room and down into the basement. Maybe he could have that, he’d be content being the group’s demon mascot, helping Dean on his hunts. They’d made a good team, hadn’t they?

(Dean didn’t trust him.)

(Crowley wasn’t enough.)

But victory over Lucifer wouldn’t be satisfying enough unless Crowley wiped that arrogant smirk off his face himself. He had to deliver the final blow, no matter if it was through his own heart.

It wasn’t like he had any other reason to stay.

Crowley opened a cupboard, searching for lamb's blood and his gaze froze on a bag of small, decorative red plastic tridents. He pulled one out of the bag, it was so small in his fingers, so easy to break. After a moment of hesitation, Crowley put it in his pocket and closed the cupboard behind him.

Crowley grabbed the lamb's blood from the next cupboard and went back into the library, the trident burning in his jacket pocket. Dean was already waiting for him in the library, tapping his fingers nervously against the wooden table. He looked up well before Crowley arrived in the room, damn hunter senses.

"Ready to take on the Devil? Again ," Crowley asked mockingly. "What must this be, the third time? You're not very good at your job."

"Whose fault is that?" Dean accused.

It wasn't a very good idea to remind Dean that Lucifer was on the loose again, especially when he wanted his forgiveness but Dean was so easy to rile off.

"I counted and I only let him out once, while you bozos let him out twice," Crowley retorted. "I don't see why I should take all the blame."

Dean’s jaw muscles clenched and part of Crowley wanted to brush against him to see if Dean would bite him.

(Depending on the context, Crowley would happily let him.)

“Come on, I know you get cranky when you’re away from Samantha for too long,” Crowley smirked.

Crowley grabbed Dean’s shoulder and led them back to the house, the effort taking a toll on the bones of his vessel. His vessel was falling apart slowly, with Lucifer’s attempted murder and the strain he was putting on it with the repeated use of his powers, but Crowley had grown too fond of it to jump ships. And it wasn’t like he was going to keep using it for long.

Crowley nearly stumbled upon landing but Dean caught his elbow, pulling him against him to steady him. His brows furrowed almost in worry as he studied Crowley’s face.”

“Are you okay?

“Don't worry your pretty little head about me,” Crowley replied, pulling away from Dean. Dean's hands were warm against his forearms. “Just missed a step.”

Crowley walked away in the direction of the kitchen, but Dean’s voice made him stop in the hallway, just under an open window. One floor below, the rift glowed brightly in the night, the exact shade of gold a demon or angel produced before dying. Crowley caught Dean’s gaze in the reflection of the glass.

“Crowley, thank you for coming. I–” Dean paused, searching for his words. “I needed you here.”

Crowley turned around. "We make a pretty good team, don't we?"

"Yeah," Dean smiled weakly, the tiredness on his face even more visible in the silence.

"It was a pleasure, Dean," Crowley replied sincerely.

I'm a firm believer that Crowley was at least a little bit in love with Dean. But who can blame him? Either way, their relationship is so complex and interesting, I love them.

I have won everyone else can go home

and so after hours of hard work and absolutely no one asking, i present: what supernatural being that has inexplicably fallen in love with dean winchester are you?