OTA

[jageskro]

It was like an itch you knew you weren't supposed to scratch. A lot of things had become clearer to Jag, about himself, since he'd watched Hex's videos, and somehow, the closer it came to the time Val would be back, the more Jag wanted to give in to his 'old' habits and do something really stupid. Start a bar in a fight with an arsehole or two, and get hurt.

It was as far from healthy as he could get, he realised, and that was why he hadn't started a bar fight in over a month now. He was in a bar right now, having a pint and trying to resist the desire to walk over to the bastards in the booth right behind him. Their racist, homophobic conversation wasn't making it easy on him. He was waiting for the misogyny to make an appearance, really. He'd barely touched his pint in the last ten minutes and was gnawing on his thumb's nail, feet propped on his bar stool, one leg bouncing.

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[sauntereddownward]

Crowley smiled then, a wide toothy smile with just enough room for his pink forked tongue to flicker out.

"Do you believe in Heaven and Hell, dear boy?" he asked. You never knew these days. It wasn't like the old days when everyone believed. Now Crowley had to be creative in this increasingly secular world.

[jageskro]

Whoa. Jag's eyebrows raised at the sight of that tongue, and then those words...

He stopped walking. And stared. "You're..."

[sauntereddownward]

"Yes. I am," Crowley nodded with a sly smirk.

[jageskro]

"A fucking demon?" he finally finished, all disbelief laced with fear.

[sauntereddownward]

"I told you I wasn't like you," he replied.

[jageskro]

"I'm nothing like you?" Jag checked, eyes wide, breath a little short, and cigarette temporarily forgotten in his hand. He'd always felt his fire was not a cold thing of science the way Em made it sound, but it didn't mean he wanted it to be a thing of Hell.

[sauntereddownward]

Crowley leaned closer and inhaled deeply, breathing the scent of him loudly.

"No, not even a little," he said. "But you are something special."

[jageskro]

Jag stumbled away when the demon leaned in, and then let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Sara-la-Kali," he whispered in Romani.

[sauntereddownward]

"No...you're something much, much worse," he continued with little pause.

[jageskro]

"Wh-what?" Jag looked at him with horror. What could be worse than a demon? Nothing was worse than a demon!

[sauntereddownward]

Crowley took a drag and tilted his head, his sunglasses hiding just how intently he was examining the lad.

"You see, demons are respectable. We've got a place in the universe. He made us, you know. Lucifer's fall and all the rest of us, that was ineffable. But you...I don't know who made you. I'm not even sure where you're from."

[jageskro]

"Oh." That didn't sound so bad. "Well, maybe I'm a fuckin' alien." He took a much needed drag off his cigarette, eyeing the demon and unsure what to do now. Turning his back on a demon did not seem like a very safe thing to do, but he didn't particularly want to stick around for a chat.

[sauntereddownward]

"You're not an alien. I've met them," he replied. "No, you're...I've never met anyone like you. Just how evil are you? On a scale of Lucifer to Monsanto...where do you fall, gypsy?"

[jageskro]

Jag's eyes flashed, demon or not, because what he was was someone with the temper to go with his fire. "Don't call me that." Roma could call themselves gypsies all they liked; other people - or not-people - didn't get to.

[sauntereddownward]

Crowley took perverse glee in the wrath that simmered there just under the surface. ANd he wondered too just what it would take to get him to boil over.

"What, gypsy? That's what you are, though," he said smoothly. And then he very obviously patted his pockets to check for his wallet and watch. "Ah, good. Can't be too careful around your kind."

[jageskro]

"Fuck you," Jag spat out, only just refraining from shoving at the demon.

Because, well. He was a demon.

[sauntereddownward]

"Such language. Swearing is a sin," he said.

Then took a drag.

"Or maybe not. Not much written about the F word on Moses's tablets, now, hmm?"

[jageskro]

"If you say so," Jag stated, and turned to go. Turning his back on a demon seemed better than the alternative, right then.

[sauntereddownward]

Crowley's low, poisonous laughter followed after him, lingering even as Jag left him far behind. He stood in his place, laughing to himself with the blue smoke of his cigarette coiling up around his head like a halo.

He wondered what the odds of stumbling across they gypsy boy again were in a city the size of London.

Fortunately for Crowley he was exceptionally lucky at times.