As it turned out, life was fairly quiet after the world didn't end.

It took Aziraphale 6000 years - give or take the length of one bus ride from Tadfield to London - to accept and openly admit that he wanted to share more than a side with Crowley. Halfway to Crowley's flat, he offered the demon his hand - and with it, his heart as well.

It took him less than two months after that to suggest that they share a home, too.

"I don't know, angel…" Crowley had cast a doubtful look around the dusty, cluttered little upstairs apartment with its soft, muted colors. "This isn't exactly my style…"

"Nor is your flat mine," Aziraphale pointed out, a single brow raised in quiet challenge.

He was secretly elated - because it did not escape his notice that Crowley had only remarked on his dubious taste, and had expressed no hesitation when it came to the underlying suggestion. His hopes were rewarded a moment later when Crowley met his eyes with a warm, almost shy smile.

"S'pose we ought to get to figuring out… what's our style, then. Hadn't we?"

A modest little cottage in a sleepy village a couple of hours outside of London, with a generous garden, and more space than either of their previous homes had offered, seemed to be just the place. Over the following few years, Crowley's plants flourished and spread until the entire garden was lush and vibrant with color.

Aziraphale collected books and rare historical artifacts until he should have run out of room to put them all - and yet, quite mysteriously, he didn't. The exterior appearance of the cottage never seemed to change - and still somehow, as Aziraphale added to his collection with abandon, there always seemed to be more space. If the cottage had more rooms after a few years than it'd had when they'd moved in, Crowley didn't mention it - though their occasional guests always seemed to remark that the place seemed to be, inexplicably, bigger on the inside.

The days and nights they passed there were blissfully uneventful.

On one such quiet evening, Aziraphale sat on their overstuffed sofa in the light of the setting sun, sipping a cup of tea and perusing his latest purchase, when Crowley emerged from the bedroom they shared, where he'd been enjoying a long nap - fully dressed and apparently in a hurry to get out the door.

Quicker than was strictly possible in human terms, Aziraphale stood between the demon and the door. Crowley blinked in surprise at seeing him suddenly there, blocking his path. Aziraphale stepped slowly closer, the corner of his mouth twitching with affectionate amusement when Crowley took an automatic step back.

The angel's voice was low and teasing, as he pressed in close, sliding his hands up Crowley's arms. "And just where do you think you're going?"

Crowley grinned as Aziraphale kissed his lips, returning the kiss for a moment before drawing back with an enigmatic little smirk. "Not telling," he replied, playful. "Can't make me."

"I rather think I could," Aziraphale countered softly, his hands edging slowly into somewhat more adventurous territory. "If I really wanted to."

Crowley's hands covered his, stilling them. "Yeah, all right, you could," he conceded with a little huff of laughter. "But I don't think you want to." When Aziraphale looked up to meet his eyes, curious, Crowley leaned down to kiss him again, drawing back to explain in a hushed whisper of breath against the side of his mouth, "You'll spoil the surprise."

Intrigued, Aziraphale relented at last with an exaggeratedly put out sigh. "Very well, then." He raised a hand to gently brush back a stray lock of hair from Crowley's brow. "I shall just have to devise a very special surprise for you as well, when you return."

"Oh, I'm counting on it, angel."

The low, desirous tone of Crowely's voice sent a pleasant little shiver down Aziraphale's spine, and he resisted the impulse to press Crowley up against the wall and kiss him senseless - among other things that would most certainly lead to his staying in for the evening and never going to retrieve Aziraphale's promised surprise.

And Aziraphale did like surprises, very much.

His demon clearly wanted to give him something special this evening.

Aziraphale settled back into his comfortable spot on the sofa with his tea, smiling a little to himself as he contemplated ways in which he could make Crowley's evening just as special in return.

The evening air was crisp and cool, and getting cooler as the sun went down over the village square. Crowley only intended to be gone a minute, so he left the Bentley running, with the doors locked, so she'd stay nice and warm until he returned - well aware that she'd grant him (and only him) access, without any need for a key. There were still a fair number of shoppers milling about, hurrying to make their purchases before the shops closed, so he'd had to park a short distance away from his destination.

A favorite spot of Aziraphale's - the village bakery.

The woman who owned it had called Crowley that morning to give him a heads up that she was preparing one of Aziraphale's favorites as the special dessert of the day.

"I'll put a half dozen back for you, if you can make it down here before closing," she'd promised.

The shops had mostly closed, and there were few cars or people left when Crowley walked out of the bakery. In a particularly cheery mood, he made his way back toward the Bentley, whistling as he went, and carefully balancing the cardboard box containing Aziraphale's treat, so as not to accidentally upend any of them. He knew Aziraphale well enough to know that - against all logic - the appearance of his food had a great deal to do with how it tasted to him.

He turned the corner, and the Bentley came into view, her shining headlights a beacon leading him toward the quiet, cozy evening he intended to spend with his angel.

All at once, Crowley began to feel… strange.

A sort of fog seemed to cloud his vision, and his steps became heavy and unsteady, as if he were slogging through thick mud. An unsettling numbness came over him, and he stopped where he stood, shaking his head, struggling to clear it. And then, suddenly, all the strength seemed to drain from his body. His heart thudding in his chest, Crowley dropped to his knees, the box of sweets falling from his hands as everything around him went dark.

The demon had vanished and was gone before the box could hit the ground, crushed against the cold concrete beside the empty spot where Crowley had just been.

The first thing Crowley was aware of when he regained awareness at all was that he seemed to be lying flat on his back. His feet were flat on the floor as well, his knees drawn up in front of him a bit. The second thing he noticed was how very heavy his limbs felt - how deeply exhausted he was. With a far greater effort than it should have required, he managed to drag himself up to a sitting position, blinking against the artificial light that, even through his sunglasses, was far brighter than the darkening village street had been.

When his vision came into focus, Crowley looked around, trying to regain his bearings and figure out where he was.

The first thing he noticed was the six-foot summoning circle beneath him.

"Oh, bloody…" Crowley muttered his frustrated complaint to no one in particular - the fact that he was rolling his eyes toward Heaven as he spoke being entirely coincidental. "Well, this sucks, I had plans, you know…"

"Oh, good, you're awake, fucking finally!"

Crowley warily lifted his eyes, and found himself face to face with a young man sitting cross-legged on the floor, just outside the circle. He had longish, sandy-colored hair, and wore glasses with thick, black frames. The expression in his cold, dark eyes was about equal parts impatient frustration and eager anticipation and all parts a rather disturbing sort of excitement.

The room they were in was a spacious, elegantly decorated parlor, which looked to be far outside of what Crowley would have assumed to be this young man's price range. Beside him on the floor were the typical trappings of a spell - herbs and candles and such - fairly basic stuff, Crowley thought at first.

And then, his gaze fell on the book that lay on the floor next to the other supplies - and his stomach dropped.

"You, uh… don't wanna be messing about with that book, kid…" he warned the boy as he climbed carefully to his feet.

The boy moved with him, standing and crossing his arms defensively over his chest. "Fairly certain I know what I can handle."

Crowley was fairly certain that he very much did not.

He himself was vaguely familiar with this book that had somehow come into this young man's possession. He'd heard stories about it, even in Hell - a book that was rumored to be a myth by some, and heavily warned against by others. The magicks in it were said to be very dark and very powerful - and to carry with them very heavy costs to anyone who presumed to use them.

The unfortunate consequences headed toward this boy were not Crowley's concern.

Getting out of this blasted trap and home to his angel, on the other hand…

Crowley drew himself up to his full height, well aware that his slender frame made it less intimidating than it might have been otherwise. That didn't matter; he wasn't relying on his size to make him scary. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them the slight shift in his vision told him that they had gone full-serpent - completely golden and fiercely inhuman in their natural state.

I know what I can handle, the foolish boy had insisted.

"Do you?"

Crowley allowed a slow, menacing smile to slide across his lips, pacing a slow half-circle near the edge of the trap. As he moved, he reached up to remove his sunglasses with a dramatic flourish, taking satisfaction in the boy's sharp intake of breath as he took an involuntary backward step, his very human eyes going wide with surprise. Crowley shook his head, falsely sympathetic.

"I don't think so. I think you've no idea what you've gotten yourself into."

Abruptly he allowed his most terrifying version of his serpent form to surface, lunging toward the kid with a menacing sound that was half-snarl, half-hiss, fangs extended and dripping venom, eyes blazing with menace.

As he did, he accidentally brushed against the invisible barrier that marked the edge of the circle - and an explosion of agony, like a tremendous electric current, tore through Crowley's body. It overwhelmed him and knocked him stumbling backward - directly into the other side of the barrier, which shocked him a second time. He collapsed forward onto the floor on his hands and knees, breathless with agony.

And the kid fucking laughed - a vicious smirk twisting his lips, his words low and colored with amusement. "Yeah, I wouldn't suggest that."

He took a couple of slow, measured steps to the side, looking down at something on the floor, and it was only then that Crowley realized - at some point he'd lost his grip on his sunglasses, and they'd landed a couple of feet past the barrier.

He couldn't reach them - but his captor could. And something in Crowley's face must have given away how much he wanted them back, because the boy looked between him and the glasses for a moment with fresh interest. He leaned down and picked them up, running his hands over them, a slight smile on his lips as he watched Crowley for his reaction.

A reaction that Crowley could have easily hidden as he usually did, if only he had his bloody sunglasses.

"Summoning circle's not… s'posed to do that," Crowley gasped, trying to appear unbothered by the loss, but unable to keep himself from watching unhappily as the kid tucked the sunglasses into the pocket of his shirt. "Just s'posed to be a… a wall, not a… a fucking electric fence!"

He'd been caught in a few summoning circles over the centuries - but the pain-on-contact aspect of this one was a particularly cruel touch that he'd never experienced.

Courtesy of that evil book…

"What were you saying?" the kid taunted quietly. "About… having no idea what I'd gotten myself into?"

Crowley didn't answer. He stayed on his knees, carefully in the center of the trap - his attention fully absorbed by what he'd just noticed at the edge of the room, along the far wall. He didn't know how he could have possibly missed it before. Perhaps it was the rather rude, jarring realization of finding himself trapped - or the dread at the sight of the book that had been used to do it. But now that Crowley had seen it, he couldn't drag his eyes away.

In a spot with no other furnishings that had presumably been cleared for this very purpose, there was a thin, plastic covered mattress, of the sort one might be forced to use in a prison, or perhaps in a summer camp.

And on the mattress lay the body of a young woman.

She was wearing a simple t-shirt and jeans. Her back was turned toward Crowley, her wrists bound behind her.

She wasn't moving. At all.

Helpless fury overcame Crowley, as he eyed the reddish substance in the bronze bowl at the center of the circle of herbs laid out before the young man. He rose to his feet again, glaring as he snapped at him, "You do realize there are demon-summoning spells that don't require sacrificed virgins, right?"

"Virgin?" the kid scoffed, casting a derisive look toward the still, prone form of the young woman on the mattress. "Please." He smirked nastily. "Now, if there was a demon-summoning spell that required a sacrificed whore, maybe..."

Oh, how Crowley hated him.

His fists flexed uselessly at his sides, itching for impact. He wasn't usually inclined toward violence - but he was aching to inflict some now.

Then, to his tremendous relief, the girl began to stir, letting out a soft moan of distress. Her voice was muffled, as she was gagged, but she sounded like she was in pain, and probably very confused and afraid.

But she was alive. That was something.

And Crowley decided in that moment that he was going to make sure she stayed that way.

"She's no sacrifice," the young man continued, glancing toward her with the sort of smile that made Crowley's blood run cold. "She's mine. But - she is the reason you're here." He looked back at Crowley, and the expression in his eyes started an unsettled churning in the pit of Crowley's stomach. "You're mine, too, now. I'm a powerful warlock, and I've summoned you, demon, and you will do as I command you… I'm your master, and..."

"Master?" Crowley grimaced, shaking his head. "Powerful warlock," he echoed, in a dubious tone that belied his growing unease. "No, no… I wouldn't say that… I wouldn't say either of those… no, I think I'd go with…" He lifted his eyes toward the ceiling, exaggeratedly thoughtful, as if trying to come up with precisely the right term, before abruptly pointing a finger at the young man and declaring, "Vile, perverse piece of walking human excrement! Yeah, that's it. That's exactly what you are! But I think I'll call you Pervy for short."

Crowley took immense satisfaction in the way Pervy's smile abruptly faded, his dark eyes glittering with fury. His words were quiet, warning. "I'd be a little more careful how you speak to me."

"I'd be a little more careful how you speak to me," Crowley echoed in high-pitched mimickry, then sneered with a slow, derisive once-over, "I'm not afraid of you… pathetic human child."

"No?" Pervy stepped closer to the trap, arms crossed over his chest, his entire body taut with angry tension. "You should be. I fucking own you now. And I own her." He pointed across the room to the girl, who was struggling to sit up, her efforts hindered by the awkward give of the mattress beneath her. "And you… are going to make sure it stays that way."

"Why are you doing this?" Crowley demanded, moving a little closer to the edge of the trap, trying to draw attention back onto himself, and away from the girl, who had just managed to turn so that she was facing them - panic in her wide, blinking eyes. He looked away from her with an effort… tried not to look at her again, to keep their captor's focus on him. "What'd she ever do to you?"

"Nothing. Yet." Pervy smirked. "But I'm sure I can come up with all sorts of fun things to have her… do to me."

Crowley wanted to vomit.

"No," he declared, putting up a hand and turning away from him in disgust. "Not helping you."

"Just like that." There was disbelief in the young man's voice, and Crowley could almost hear his dubiously raised eyebrows. "Not gonna… try to make a deal, or something? Your help in exchange for, like… my soul, or whatever?"

Crowley looked back at him again with clear disdain. "Not sure you've got one," he countered. "Wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole if you did."

Pervy blinked at Crowley in confusion. "You're a demon," he pointed out unnecessarily. "That's the point of you."

"Really not."

"What, so you're telling me out of all the demons in the universe, I managed to summon the one who's got an actual conscience?" He let out a startled, bitter laugh, running a hand down over his face and shaking his head. "Oh, fuck me."

Crowley put as much disgust into his expression as he could as he looked Pervy over, his tone flat and unimpressed. "No, thanks."

Pervy looked up at him, his lip curled into an expression that was ugly and malicious as he met Crowley's gaze. "Doesn't matter," he concluded coldly. "Because I never intended to make a deal with you, anyway. You're going to help me - because I'm not giving you a choice."

"Why do you need my help, anyway?" Crowley sighed, annoyed and impatient. "Why not just… build a freaky torture dungeon in your basement like all the other disgusting predators? Why drag demons and magic into it in the first place?"

Pervy shrugged, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a slight smile. "I'm renting." His smile faded, a dangerous light in his eyes as he added, more serious, waving a hand down to indicate the evidence of the spell he'd cast. "And why not use what you've got? I'm good at this."

Crowley eyed the book warily. "Not as good as you think," he countered, low and ominous.

"I thought maybe I could find a spell to keep a woman in here - turn the whole place into my… freaky torture dungeon." He grinned - then it faded as he shook his head slowly. "Couldn't seem to find a spell to trap humans. But demons, on the other hand…"

"Right." Crowley nodded slowly down at the trap surrounding him. "And just how, pray tell, am I supposed to keep her in this house, if I'm stuck in this circle?"

Pervy smiled at him, a creepy, cold smile that made Crowley shiver.

"We'll get to that."

Crowley laughed darkly, shaking his head. "Oh, no, we won't. Number one - I don't take orders from anyone." He paused, amending, "No, wait. Number one, you're disgusting. Number two…" He turned to fully face the young man, advancing as much as he could, making his voice as low and menacing as possible. "I don't… take orders from anyone."

Crowley'd had a lot of different reactions from humans who'd summoned him over the years. Most of them consisted of mainly shock and terror at the fact that it'd actually worked. Many humans seemed to find that once he was actually there, in front of them, they actually had no bloody clue what they wanted to do with him.

This guy was… different.

Disturbingly different. Too calm, too casual about the whole thing. Well prepared, Crowley had to admit, even if he wasn't bright enough to know to be afraid of what he might have brought down on himself by using that book.

He wasn't afraid of Crowley, either. Not even a little bit.

"What's your name?" he asked, quietly commanding.

Crowley let out a rude little snorting laugh, turning away from him. "Please," he scoffed. "There's power in a name, and you're not getting mine."

Crowley wasn't anywhere near that stupid.

He immediately regretted turning his back on his captor, as without warning a fiery pain ripped into his side, coursing through his entire body with a powerful jolt of electric agony. Crowley cried out in outraged, pained protest as he dropped to one knee, holding his ribs. When he managed to catch his breath, he glared up at Pervy - who was now holding a cattle prod in his right hand. He smiled as he tapped it lightly into his left hand, calm and unperturbed.

"What's your name?" he repeated.

Crowley hesitated, and Pervy took a step closer, extending the prod.

"Fine, fine!" Crowley protested, holding up one hand, the other still pressed tight against his side. "It's Hastur, all right? Bloody hell."

On the off chance that he managed to get out of here in some way that did not involve Pervy's gruesome death, Crowley figured that he might as well toss this irritating blighter Hastur's way. See which one came out on top.

Either way, Crowley reasoned - he won.

Pervy sat down on the floor again, opening the book, and Crowley couldn't suppress the shiver that went down his spine when he apparently found the spell he was looking for and then reached for the ingredients he needed to set them up around him. When they were all arranged to his satisfaction, he began to read the Latin from the book.

Idiot child. Never read the Latin from the book.

Crowley grimaced, braced for the worst as Pervy finished his spell.

And absolutely nothing happened.

Crowley barely had time enough to wonder what was supposed to have happened, before Pervy was clambering to his feet, his movements made clumsy in his furious haste. Crowley tensed as he reached for the cattle prod he'd set down beside him - but he didn't use it on Crowley.

Instead, he crossed the room with angry, purposeful steps, towering over the bound and helpless young woman. Fully conscious by now, sitting up, she drew back against the corner behind her with a choked, frightened little sound behind the strip of cloth tied across her mouth.

"No," Crowley protested, horrified when he realized what Pervy intended. "No, don't!"

Pervy ignored him, pressing the prod into the girl's side, turning to glare at Crowley with vindictive satisfaction as she let out a muffled scream of pain, and struggled uselessly to get away from him.

"Stop it!" Crowley snarled, furious. "Stop it, she didn't do anything!" He took a step forward - in his desperate rage, forgetting the limitations of the circle for a moment, and receiving a sharp, stinging reminder. He stumbled back away from the shock, gasping, frustrated at his own helplessness. "Stop, all right, I'm sorry!"

"You lied to me," Pervy stated coldly as he finally, finally withdrew the prod. "Tell me your real name."

The hoarse, pitiful sobs from the mattress tore at Crowley's heart, and he couldn't bring himself to look at the girl, his guilt heavy on his shoulders.

"I did," he insisted. "Not my fault if your spell went wrong."

"No," Pervy laughed, a dark, angry sound. "No, if you had, then you'd be the one writhing in pain right now, not her." His amusement faded abruptly into menace. "Tell me."

The implications of his words were not lost on Crowley. The spell was intended to use his name to give his captor some kind of power over him - power to hurt him. Power to control him, probably.

Could lie again… but he'll just keep hurting her until he gets the truth…

Crowley had long since given up even pretending that he didn't care about a thing like that.

There was little option left to him.

"Crowley," he admitted with a sigh, rolling his eyes. "It's Crowley, all right? Just… leave her alone."

Pervy repeated his previous procedure - laying out his ingredients, reading through the Latin spell from the book. There was an instant just after he finished when it looked as if once again, nothing had happened. Crowley barely had time for a frustrated realization that perhaps this kid just sucked at witchcraft. Perhaps the spell couldn't work, the way he was doing it, and that poor girl was going to get shocked again because of Pervy's cruelty and bloody incompetence…

Coherent thought was abruptly driven from Crowley's mind as an intense wave of pain ripped through his body. He collapsed, overwhelmed. It was unspeakable, unbearable torment. It felt as if he was being torn apart from the inside. He couldn't even draw breath to scream. He was vaguely aware of his captor standing over him, silently watching as time stretched into moment after moment of interminable agony.

Then, finally, Pervy spoke - a single, soft word of Latin.

Slowly, the pain faded away. Crowley's entire body was trembling so hard that it was all he could do to remain upright on his knees. His heart raced, and he struggled to catch his breath as his vision gradually came back into focus. Pervy was crouched down next to him, almost within reach, studying him closely with a calm, curious smile - but his dark eyes were lit with an almost feral hunger, an expression of pleasure that made Crowley's heart sink with dread. A shiver passed through him when the young man spoke, his voice soft and satisfied.

"Perfect."