Chapter Text
Crowley had come to the inexorable and entirely reasonable conclusion that God - if, indeed, such a being existed - had pointed Their divine finger his way and declared, “Fuck this idiot in particular.”
Maggie would tell him that he was being unrealistically morose. Nina would suggest that perhaps he might reconsider his daily insistence on inhuman quantities of caffeine. Muriel would probably chuckle in that slightly-confused way of theirs and inquire as to why God would have any specific bone to pick with Crowley, of all people.
They would all have very good points, but Crowley would persist in his belief. If was the only logical explanation for the toppling-domino disaster of bullshit that had become his life in the past forty-or-so hours.
Another flash of lightning temporarily illuminated the path - or lack thereof - half a second too late for Crowley to avoid tripping over a raised tree root. He managed to catch himself before sprawling into the mud again, but only by crashing his body into a nearby tree whose bark bit into the flesh of his arm.
“Satan’s pustulant bollocks!” Crowley growled up at the unforgiving sky. “Give me a fucking break, would you?!”
The sky responded, predictably, with a taunting roll of thunder and a redoubling of the steady torrent of rain.
“Yeah, well, fuck you too,” Crowley snarled into the darkness as he pressed on.
Why, oh why, had Crowley given in to this foolish whim? He should be back in London, in his posh Mayfair flat, in the bed he’d splurged half his last book advance on. He should be cruising the city in his pride and joy Bentley, frustrating the other drivers on the road with his tendency to virtually ignore speed limits. He should be sprawled in a corner booth at Nina’s coffee shop, warm and heavily caffeinated, fingers poised over his keyboard and-
Oh. Right. That was why he’d given in to this foolish whim. Blasted, bastard, bollocksing writer’s block.
-
It really had seemed like a great idea at the time, one both his friends and his agent had heartily encouraged. A solo writer’s retreat, somewhere remote, quiet, out in nature. Somewhere he could rest, relax, and refresh himself. Time to himself to indulge in a little self-care, and hopefully work his way through this stranglehold that had been choking the life out of his creativity. On paper it sounded like a great plan, and he hadn’t even had to strain himself to find a place to go.
The lone cabin on Demon’s Fang ridge deep in the Scottish mountains had been in Crowley’s family for generations. Supposedly, its original inhabitant had been some distant relative who was also a witch and had chosen this spot for its seclusion and access to a wide variety of ‘ingredients’. Said witch had willed the cabin and its land to her niece, with strict stipulations that it remain in the family indefinitely. As such, it had been passed on, and on, and on…until it had eventually landed in Crowley’s lap by consequence of his being the last left in the line. It was really rather a lonely reason to wind up owning property in the middle of nowhere, and Crowley had honestly not thought much about it since the bequest because he liked London and rarely left it. Once the idea of a retreat to get past his writer’s block came to mind, though, he found he was ecstatic to have it.
At least, that had been until he’d actually gotten there.
-
Another flash of lightning brightened the sky, making the shadow of trees and craggy ledges dance all around Crowley. The thunder came scarcely a heartbeat later, so close and loud that it felt like the whole mountain was shaking. The rain fell with an almost unnatural force, pummeling Crowley, the chill sinking right through to his bones. He was going to wind up sick as a dog after this…if he even managed to survive at all.
He pressed forward with a scowl and grim determination. He absolutely fucking refused to let this place take him out like this.
-
It wasn’t that the place wasn’t nice. It was certainly peaceful, and absolutely beautiful. The landscape would have been a fever dream for an artist or photographer. And it wasn’t that there was anything inherently wrong with the cabin itself. It was mostly in its original state - a single-bedroom dwelling of brick and stone - but it had been substantially updated over the course of many years and many owners. There was a gas generator for power, and a decent-sized icebox, and while most of the furniture was multiple decades old there was a small, modern washroom with a bathtub piped to a hot water heater.
(And fuck, if that bath didn’t sound goddamn fantastic right now…)
No, there was nothing specifically amiss with either the cabin or the locale. The problem was simply that it seemed as though Crowley had been cursed from the moment he had set foot on this damned mountain.
First, the generator had refused to start up, directly threatening the state of the supplies Crowley had brought which required the icebox. He’d eventually managed to get it up and running, but it had been a long and painful affair involving YouTube videos that kept buffering because of the shoddy cell signal. Nearly three hours of swearing and kicking later, the generator had finally sputtered to life, leaving Crowley feeling a strange mixture of victory and defeat, knowing he’d have been utterly lost without the barely-there access to the internet.
Secondly, the rather ancient stove had proved to be nothing more than a brick taking up space. This one Crowley couldn’t even begin to fix, as it transpired that the issue involved broken and corroded wires that he had no way of safely repairing. At least, not without making the two hour drive back into the nearest town.
Luckily there were cast-iron pots and pans, as well as metal racks designed specifically for cooking directly over the fireplace. Unfortunately, Crowley had never actually built a fire manually before. It had taken him half a box of matches, a ridiculous amount of kindling, and another two half-loaded YouTube videos before he’d actually managed a half-decent flame.
Then, while pulling something together for dinner, he’d scalded himself by idiotically grabbing at the cast-iron pan with his bare hand.
It only continued on from there. His dinner wound up burnt while he fussed about with his injured hand. In attempting to release the smoke he broke the latch on a window. Whilst giving the window a good shove to seat it back in place, he shook a nearby shelf and caused a small lamp to topple and shatter on the floor. By the time he’d cleaned up all the broken glass his dinner was both burnt and cold, and he just wanted to go to bloody bed.
But before he could do even that, he had to strip the sheets and take them outside to shake them out since the bed - like everything else in the cabin - was coated in dust from lack of use.
During the shaking out process, he’d accidentally released one of the sheets, which had fluttered right into a muddy patch, almost as if on purpose. Crowley had left it there and stomped back into the cabin with a wild snarl of frustration.
If it hadn’t been for the darkness settling in and the memory of how skinny and treacherous the pathway up here had been even for the small sedan he’d rented for the trip (like hell was he bringing the Bentley out here into the wilderness) Crowley probably would have fucked off home right then.
But no. Some small sense of self-preservation (as well as not wanting to explain to the rental place how he’d destroyed their car) sent him off to bed instead, down one sheet but perfectly capable of getting on with what was left.
Strangely enough, he’d actually slept decently well. Exhaustion combined with the surprisingly soothing sounds of the forest outside his window served to lull him into a deep, dreamless sleep from which he awoke feeling calm and refreshed.
That sense of genuine restfulness convinced Crowley to stay and give this nonsense another day…and for most of the day it seemed like things were actually looking up. He managed his second fire in less than half the time of the first, cooked breakfast without burning either the food or himself, and spent a significant portion of the morning and afternoon cleaning up around the place. Banishing dust and filling the space with the lemony scent of all-purpose cleaner made Crowley feel a bit fonder of the cabin, more comfortable in his surroundings. The resultant feelings of calm and accomplishment convinced him that he could - maybe, possibly - get some writing done next.
This was when things began to go wrong again, because rather than just curling up in the aging armchair next to the fireplace, Crowley had packed a fresh notebook, a water bottle, and a compass into a satchel and gone for a walk in search of somewhere ‘nature-y’ to write.
He hadn’t taken notice of the storm clouds slowly rolling up over the eastern rise of the mountain. Neither had he noticed the well-hidden root that had sent him tumbling down a steep incline to land with a hard thud that had sent his head spinning before he passed out all together.
When he finally woke he was grateful to discover that his head was not bleeding, despite how hard it was throbbing. He was not grateful to find that the forest was dark as pitch and that it had begun raining.
-
That had been roughly an hour ago, if Crowley could trust the numbers that were frozen on his shattered, nonreactive mobile screen, and the storm seemed to intensify with each passing minute. Worse, because of the fall and getting turned around as a result, he was only really guessing that his compass was leading him in roughly the right general direction.
He could be twenty feet from the cabin and wouldn’t know it unless the lightning happened to flare and illuminate the area at just the right time. Or he could be twenty kilometers from the cabin and absolutely fucked beyond the telling of it.
As if to say, ‘Ha! It’s more likely the second option!’, a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky to reveal nothing but more shadowy, unforgiving forest.
“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!” Crowley screeched into the darkness, only for his voice to be completely drowned out by thunder.
The thing was, it was Crowley’s natural instinct to respond to extreme stress with anger and pigheaded stubbornness, and these extreme emotions had seen him through more than his fair share of difficult situations. That said, even Crowley had to admit - as the seconds and minutes ticked on - that this wasn’t a situation he was going to be able to shout his way out of. He was lost in the wilderness at night, in a raging storm, in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of kilometers from civilization, with a broken phone and no supplies beyond his one water bottle and a destroyed notebook.
He’d also been trying very hard to ignore the fact that he felt more than a bit woozy from the hit to the head, and his shivering had been intensifying to concerning levels.
Crowley was not well, and getting worse every further moment that he was out here.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ die out here,” he realized, only to stumble over his own feet as the thought truly sank in. The next thing he knew, he was on his hands and knees in the mud, leaning a shoulder heavily against the base of a large tree. He was slightly disturbed to realize that the mud felt warm against his fingers, which must mean that his fingers themselves were dangerously cold.
“I wonder how long it’ll take the girls to realize something’s gone wrong,” he murmured to himself, burying his hands deeper into the mud without thinking about it. “Guess Nina was right to laugh when I said I was gonna get ‘back to nature’.” A short, sharp, derisive laugh was swallowed up by the pounding of the rain.
Crowley wanted to get up and keep moving - he really did - but all at once he couldn’t find the will or the energy to move any further. He was exhausted, dizzy, frozen, and above all else, suddenly and dangerously calm about the whole situation. Before he even realized he was moving, he’d fallen further, sinking to the ground alongside the tree.
“Seems like as good a spot for a nap as any,” Crowley sighed to himself. The mud seemed almost soothing against his cheek, and the battering of the rain seemed to be getting further and further away by the moment. “I’ll just…rest…a bit…”
Crowley’s eyelids began to flutter closed.
A long, crackling bolt of lightning struck somewhere nearby, creating a sound like a small explosion and a light so bright that it left silhouettes burned into Crowley’s eyes for several moments.
One such silhouette looked very much like a person in a rain slicker standing less than half a dozen yards away.
Crowley thought that he lifted his head, but couldn’t seem to keep it up. He thought he yelled, called out for help, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice over the rolling, rumbling thunder. Darkness settled back over him and he thought - after a minute of nothingness - that his over-stressed mind must have been imagining things.
Then something appeared above his head, shielding him from the rain.
And when Crowley turned his head and squinted up into the darkness, another bolt of lightning briefly illuminated a worried-looking pair of eyes.
They were the most beautiful eyes Crowley had ever seen… Some wild, mercurial, shifting shade of blue-green-gray…
The stranger said something in a voice that was laced thick with concern, but Crowley couldn’t make out the words.
He slipped under with a soft, exhausted sound, wishing that he could stay away just a little bit longer to catch another glimpse of those beautiful eyes…