Work Text:
The water trickled over the rocks, fast and wild with the rainfall of spring. Crowley leaned closer, sharp eyes catching the motion of crabs among the pebbles, fish darting between the relative safety of the larger stones.
“Ahu!” the child called, out of breath as she ran up beside him. “Look!”
She unfolded her hand to reveal a beetle, several times larger than Crowley’s crabs. As soon as the light hit it, it made a mad dash for freedom. Ishti expertly caught it again, returning it to her palm.
“Very colorful,” Crowley said obligingly.
“You keep it,” Ishti ordered, picking up the insect and holding it out. “I’ll look for more.”
Crowley held out his hand and she dumped the beetle into it. “Where are we going to put them?”
Ishti shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s getting dark soon anyway, we’ll have to go home.” She ran off in search of more victims.
Crowley eyed the bug in his hand. “You behave,” he told it.
The beetle ran up his sleeve.
Crowley rolled his eyes and turned back to the water, searching out his crabs again. He still wasn’t entirely used to Ishti’s casual comments like we’ll have to go home. Wasn’t used to the idea of anyone looking out for him, let alone expecting him back at night.
It had all been an accident, really. He didn’t usually go in for tempting children, but one week he was behind on temptations, bored, stressed, and the child had been right there. She wanted to put the crab on her neighbor’s neck. It was an easy temptation to make, with an extremely satisfying outcome.
So satisfying, in fact, that he had gotten distracted watching the neighbor splutter and shriek and had quite forgotten to fade himself back into the background. And, well, wasn’t it just his luck that his human form apparently bore a striking resemblance to the child’s recently departed and much-missed older brother?
Ishti knew he wasn’t truly her brother reincarnated, at least. Her parents too; fooling parents into believing you were their own child was a complex trick that didn’t always work even when you tried. Parents always knew that kind of thing. But they were hurting, all three of them, overflowing with a love that no longer had anywhere to go. Could it really hurt to let them have back a bit of what they’d lost?
It was a question Crowley avoided probing, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.
Ishti had returned, bearing four more beetles and a streak of mud over her eye.
“Here,” she said breathlessly, thrusting them at him. “We have to go home, they’ll be looking for us.”
Crowley accepted the offered insects with one hand, letting Ishti grab the other and pull him, chattering, towards the parents’ house.
So yes, maybe he was basking a little, absorbing this feeling of being a brother, and a son. Sue him.
He’d been alone on this world long enough to have earned a little family.