okay I’ve seen a lot of posts about sterling just being crowley and. guys. the implications just hear me out 😭😭😭
bending lore slightly here BUT let’s say crowley’s body was once inhabited by a human and crowley is possessing the body (maybe he kills the initial inhabitant bc he doesn’t care)
but he still has the guy’s memories. he doesn’t bother keeping up appearances with his ‘ex wife’ because he is too busy building up his hell empire. BUT for some reason he can’t quite identify, he still feels something towards his ‘daughter’. he lets the divorce happen and doesn’t feel the need (or desire) to fight for custody, but he can never quite forget her, to cast her out of his mind for good
some hijinks ensue with the leverage team. it’s mostly because even a grind culture demon wants some off time every once in a while, and for him the insurance investigator stuff is more of a hobby. interacting with the leverage crew is very low stakes for him, and honestly, quite amusing. they aren’t on his level power-wise, but that ford character gives him the mental exercise he hasn’t experienced in, well, he can’t even remember
he can feel their frustration and anger when they learn he has become employed by interpol and feeds off it. it’s great, and relaxing in a way he is never able to achieve while conducting hell-related business
one year he gets wind that olivia is in a really bad situation associated with his ‘ex wife’s’ new husband. he’s selling vital hardware to terrorists, and while that might actually be the kind of chaos he would normally support or be entertained by as the king of hell, something feels wrong about letting olivia stay anywhere near that man
he calls upon the body’s adversaries. he wouldn’t admit it, even under duress, BUT he feels slightly fond of them. nate for the three dimensional chess they play, sophie for her ability to charm and disguise, parker for her chaos and slightly unsettling nature (it’s the autism swag and being bad with human interaction but he doesn’t know that lol), hardison for his unapologetic intelligence and eliot for his hardened violent past and take-no-shit persona (he’s fun to tease)
they perform exactly as he expected, right into his carefully crafted plan. and then olivia is under his care and things get more complicated. he keeps her FAR, FAR away from anything related to the supernatural (heh). no one can find out about her, ESPECIALLY not those imbecile hunter brothers (if for nothing else than the embarrassment in revealing he has a weak spot)
not sure how to work it into this post but I also want to add that somewhere along the way he develops feelings for nate and sophie. the frame up job is near and dear to my heart and you can’t convince me that isn’t fighting as flirting behavior. his interpol persona is more of a side hustle so to speak, but he finds it fun (relaxing, even) to fill that role. there aren’t any obligations of other demons, bothersome hunters, or anything like that. nate and sophie are low stakes, except, they aren’t, really. they make him feel things he can’t ever really remember feeling. his heart beats fast when sophie sat in his lap and cradled his face, his hands sweat when nate gives him that certain smug look. he’s exasperated by the way they can run circles around him like no one else has ever before. they annoy him and get under his skin in a way no one else can and it’s infuriating. but also not, at the same time. maybe he likes it
and then the long goodbye job happens
hear me out and suspend your belief here for a second, because I can’t remember if crowley supernaturally knows when ppl die/are dead or not.
so nate is in interpol custody and the interviewer is obviously out of her depth. (most people are, when it comes to nathan ford.) he walks in and pours the man a drink, but he’s fuming. somewhere along the way he came to care about the team. hell and suffering is literally in his (official) job description, but he can admit (only to himself) that he admires what they do. it’s not for him, not anything close to where his passions and interests lie, but he respects their drive and purpose. he is also aware enough to acknowledge that they are a family, a group of misfits that never belonged quite anywhere except to each other.
and nate fucking blew it up, ruined it, because his vice is being so obsessed with the end game that he is apparently willing to let his team, his family, the people that anchor him to reality, die because the ends supposedly justify the means.
not this time. not to sterling crowley
he is enraged. he can admit within the confines of his mind that he cares for nate, for sophie, even for the other three (though nate and sophie have somehow made it a hierarchy where they are more important to him. which he will dissect later in private. maybe.)
nate let them die, he let sophie die, and for what? the black book? hell below, crowley would have made things easier somehow, if he knew that this was where nate’s sights had lied. he would have prevented this somehow. he wants to have prevented this. he doesn’t want any of them dead and is too afraid to check and verify because that would make it real. the idea of sophie (or any of them) somehow making it to hell instead of heaven would probably break something in him he might not be able to repare fully.
he yells at nate- he’s angry. hellfire burning in his heart because everything is ruined. the deaths aside (however hard it is to set them aside in his mind), nate will not recover from this, not ever. this will be the start of the end, he is sure. a miserable, guilt-ridden existence where he drinks himself to death and nothing will save him. it plays out in crowley’s mind in a thousand different ways that are beyond painful to conceptualize, even in theory.
the story starts to unravel and there is a game afoot. a solemn, miserable, infuriating game because the con is still in session because parker is alive and in the building- which sets another fire alight in his chest. ‘parker even know you got hardison killed?’ he rages for her grief when she finds out. he knows it will double when she finds out eliot has perished, too, because he isn’t fucking blind.
but nate is a brilliant man, lest he forget too quickly. they are all alive, and somehow still the entire crew slips through his fingers. he’s not even angry (he never would have been- he doesn’t actually try too hard to catch them. it’s about the game, not the consequences). he lets them keep the black book because he’s fucking exhausted and honestly, they more than earned it.
‘now we’re even. tell sophie to drive carefully’. they will never be even, not really. crowley would never admit or agree that being human is the superior state of being, but that have made him feel human in a way he doesn’t actually mind. they keep him on his toes and match him in a way unique to them, they remind him that there are other things than the realm of hell. not necessarily bigger than hell, but maybe just as important in a different sense.
watching the van drive away, something inside him settles. when he walked into the interrogation room that day he thought this was the beginning of the end. it’s not the end at all, not an end to anything. it’s a continuation of their story. maybe, he thinks, a beginning to a new era in it
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i always sing the praises of having a beta reader if you want that sort of thing, but actually there are two separate fic-editor types:
alpha reader: just fucking uncritically loves your work. #1 fan. fully obsessed with the pairing you're writing to the exclusion of all good sense. might correct a comma or two but they are there to tell you that you are amazing and that you have never done anything wrong in your life and you should post that shit immediately. you ask them "does this part work?" and they say yes before the question is fully out of your mouth. the golden retriever of writing friends. every writer 100% needs one of these in their back pocket.
pros: THE best preemptive defense against the gaping chasm of self-doubt between "post work" and the first kudos.
cons: this is the reason why sometimes you see a fic that has eight beta readers thanked in the author's notes and the main character's name spelled wrong.
beta reader™️: these friends also fucking love your work, but the way they want to love it is to stick their fingers in your fic like a fruit bin at the grocery store and gently squeeze your characters (and commas) to see if they're ripe.
a good beta reader will copy edit your fic, notice if you've used the same sentence three times, and let you know if your sex scenes seem to contain the intended number of dicks per person.
a great one will highlight for you what's unique and wonderful about your writing, will help you problem-solve and plot through long fic, and will lovingly bug the shit out of you with how did she get here? and would he really say that? and is this what you meant? and when you say "oh shit no it isn't" their eyes light up and they go OKAY! let's figure this out!!!
more of a border collie kind of situation.
pros: the best way to polish your fic and grow as a fic writer. in my experience, it's also an incredible way to work through impostor syndrome. knowing someone you respect has been all up in your fic's junk and still says "it's great and you're great, now post it!" is a game-changer.
cons: if they show you what's not working, you're probably going to have to take time to fix it :/
caveats: not everyone who wants to give constructive feedback can deliver it in a way that works for everyone, so if the experience ends up making you feel bad, this is not a good match! it's also VERY helpful to tell your beta reader what level of editing you're looking for. if someone asks "can you give this a quick once-over before i post?" i know they want me to look for obvious mistakes and reassure them that it's post-worthy. if you ask me to "rip it apart" i'm going in there with a fine tooth comb.
(the primary motivation of both of these editor breeds is, of course, that they want you to write more and they want to read it before everyone else.)
bonus mode:
specialty reader: sensitivity readers and subject matter experts! if you are lucky enough to find and motivated enough to use one of these, their job is not to look at commas or to tell you that you're great, but to give advice on something specific in your fic.
edit: check the reblogs for a correction! turns out “alpha reader” is a pre-existing term in some circles for someone who helps you during the process, a lot like the great beta-reader i described above. taking suggestions for renaming my version of the alpha reader above. i’m thinking “hype man.”
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