Chapter Text
Dean stared at the phone in his hand for a long time. The contact page was up and his finger hovered over the button, but he hated that he had to make this call. With a great surge of will, he tapped the screen and waited, trying to ignore his pounding heart. It rang long enough that he thought it would go to voicemail.
“Look who came crawling back,” Crowley drawled.
“I don’t want to be calling, trust me,” Dean said, patience already running out. “I need a favor.”
“That’s not how this works. You owe me, remember?”
Dean growled and glanced over at Sam’s still form in the panic room. He’d done this before, he could do it again. “You want to make a deal, then? Like every other God-forsaken demon out there?”
Crowley hung up.
Dean called back.
This time Crowley answered on the first ring. “Fuck off,” he said, then promptly hung up again.
Dean redialed and this time there was no answer. “Damnit!” he shouted, resisting the urge to fling his phone across the basement.
It turned out his instincts were good; an unknown number appeared on his screen.
“It’s rather bad form to antagonize those you want help from, and he is rather sensitive about the whole ‘God-forsaken’ thing.”
“Angel!” Crowley indignantly shouted from somewhere in the background.
“I don’t want your help, I need it,” Dean said. That must be made very clear.
“All the more important to be polite, my boy.”
Dean gritted his teeth. Aziraphale was more bearable than Crowley, but sometimes… “It’s Cas. He’s gone off the rails and we need to find him.” He looked at Sam again. He really shouldn’t tell them, but at this point he didn’t feel he had a choice. “Sam’s down. His soul was trapped in the Cage with Lucifer and Michael for a year. Death built a wall to block the memories, but Cas tore it down and we-”
Aziraphale and Crowley were suddenly in the basement with him, Crowley sprawled across the floor spluttering.
“-need help,” Dean finished lamely, staring at them and once again curing teleporting beings.
“For Sssomebody’s sake, Angel, I ssaid no!” Crowley hissed as he scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off.
“I can hardly stand by and do nothing in these circumstances,” Aziraphale said. “You are welcome to return home.” He brushed past Dean but paused at the panic room door with a frown.
“And leave you alone with these maniacs? Not bloody likely.”
Dean could not see Crowley’s glare through his sunglasses, but he felt the heat and returned it.
“These are rather uncomfortable,” Aziraphale said, peering into the panic room and examining the angel proofing.
“Well I’m not taking them down and I’m not bringing him out here.” Dean folded his arms.
Aziraphale sighed and stepped into the room with a grimace. His movements were slow and careful.
“Hey hey hey!” Dean spluttered, quickly following as the former angel stopped by Sam’s head. “What are you doing?”
“Helping.”
“Yeah, well, Cas thinks he’s helping too, and look where that’s gotten us.”
“I would hardly-”
He was interrupted by a sharp hiss followed by an amused hum.
“I’d heard you two were back in the game, but I didn’t quite believe it. But then, if anybody could pull you out of retirement, it would be the Winchesters.”
“Balthazar,” Aziraphale said, facing the angel outside the room. Crowley was watching the new arrival with a sneer but had chosen to lounge against the wall just inside the angel-proofing. Dean had an odd satisfaction knowing the supposedly all-powerful Serpent of Eden was still unnerved by some angels.
“We gonna have a problem?” Bobby asked from the stairs.
“No,” Balthazar said, maintaining eye contact with Aziraphale and completely ignoring Crowley, “but I would like a word in private with my older brother if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” Aziraphale said, moving b ack across the room in the same slow movements. Balthazar’s eyebrow raised when Aziraphale stepped out unimpeded by the warding. Crowley hissed, but fell silent with a stern look from his partner. “See if you can help Sam.”
“No way in hell I’m letting him mess with Sam’s brain.”
“No way on Earth, either,” Crowley added.
“There seems to be some understandable tension here, so I’ll just wait upstairs,” Balthazar said, already retreating.
Aziraphale fixed a steady gaze on Crowley, who held up his hands. “I’ll behave.”
“Will you two idjits stop it?” Bobby growled as soon as the angels were both gone. He was scowling at the pair in the room. “You’re actin’ like children. It’s obvious you two have more in common than the rest of us and you’re both too thick-skulled to admit it.”
Crowley looked as though he’d been slapped. He stared at Bobby, slack-jawed as he was scolded. Dean, used to his surrogate father’s lectures, merely folded his arms and glowered.
“You keep trying to be friends and then one of you,” his accusing glare flashed to Dean, “has to throw out insults intended to start a fight. You need to get yer heads out of yer damn asses and get along or so help me I will lock you both in here until you do.”
Crowley scoffed and his head twitched in a way that suggested he’d rolled his eyes.
Bobby reached out with a piece of chalk and very calmly added a single stroke to the sigil nearest the door. Even Dean felt the energy change as Crowley suddenly snapped upright as if burned by the wall.
“What the-” he pressed a hand against an invisible wall that now stretched across the doorway. “Let me out, now,” Crowley said, voice low and dangerously calm.
“No.”
Crowley hissed and stalked in a circle around the room, examining the walls. Dean kept himself between the former demon and his brother. He examined the new sigil. “Let me out,” he snapped again, agitation rising.
“Dean,” Bobby said expectantly without breaking his stare-down with Crowley.
“He’s not gonna let you out,” Dean said with a sigh. He could have walked out of course, but Crowley was between him and the door and was pretty sure Bobby would close the door before he got halfway there. “Not until we work things out.”
“I’ve tried,” Crowley spat. “He insists on being a bigot!”
“Hey!”
“Sam would tell you the same thing,” Bobby snapped.
Dean took a step toward his surrogate father. “Don’t you use Sam-”
Bobby swung the door closed.
“Bobby!” Dean shouted the same time Crowley yelled, “Let me out!”
Dean grunted and dropped onto the edge of Sam’s cot, all the fight bleeding out of him. He knew he wouldn’t win against Bobby.
Crowley immediately started pacing the circumference of the room again and Dean could see the silhouette of his eyes flicking about through his glasses. His breathing was suddenly coming in rapid, shallow gasps.
Dean watched him for a moment. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you’re panicking.”
“Fuck you.”
“Buy me dinner first.”
Crowley stopped and glared at him, lip twitching into half a snarl. He looked for all the world like a trapped animal.
“Okay, fine, yes, I have a problem with demons. They’ve brought nothing but grief to our family. Our mom was murdered over Sam’s crib, stuck to the ceiling and set on fire when he was six months old. Few years ago, Sam’s girlfriend gets the same. We finally caught up with the bastard and Yellow-Eyes – Azazel, I guess – killed our Dad. Almost got me, and set up Sam’s death.”
Crowley was watching him between shooting furtive glances at various parts of the room. He pointedly looked at the man passed out on the bed.
Dean glanced back at his brother. “I sold my soul to a crossroads demon to bring him back,” he said, hating that he felt the need to tell Crowley this. Why did it matter? He was going to kill Bobby for this. “So yeah, I got a problem with things with yellow eyes. I got trust issues. Look what happened with Cas.” He grimaced.
“I’ve been betrayed by an angel too. You’re not special.” The words were clearly meant to bite, but Crowley’s heart clearly wasn’t behind it.
“But you and Aziraphale-”
“It took six thousand years and Armageddon to get to where we are. There were several betrayals. He always came back.” Crowley was avoiding looking at Dean, back to searching the walls. His breathing was getting faster and Dean realized the former demon’s hand’s were shaking.
“You okay, man?” he asked, not wanting to be in a confined space if Crowley lost it.
“Fine,” Crowley snarled at him, then hurled himself against the door. “Let me out!”
Dean covered his ears against the shriek, but he still heard a thump against the other side of the door. Aziraphale’s voice shook the walls. “What did you do.”
Dean could hear Bobby’s gruff voice, but it was quiet enough he couldn’t make out the words.
“Let him out. Now.”
“Don’t look at me, I’m not getting involved,” Balthazar said.
Dean strode over to the wall and broke the sigil with his finger.
“You could have done that the whole time?” Crowley asked wildly.
“If I had to be stuck in here, so did you.”
Crowley didn’t deign to reply before he vanished, before the door even finished opening.
“Well done,” Balthazar said cheerfully. “Now they’re both mad at you!”