No Exit

[Ada Wong]

For a moment, Crowley simply gawked at the guy, cowering pretty obviously in fear or some other emotion that was very much like it. He then scowled, having seemingly overcome his cowardice, and promptly shrugged Dean Winchester’s grip off so that he could put some space between them. It was a lot easier said than done, what with that knife prickling awfully close to his throat, but Crowley managed to do it.

"First off,” he opined, placing a comfortable distance between himself and whatever this fellow thought he was. “First off— you’ll have to ask me to dinner first. And keep your grubby mitts to yourself. I’m not having it.” 

The serpent fumbled a bit, still reeling after being jostled about like he had. He made a valiant effort to recover some of his earlier decorum despite the state of utter disarray it was in, a single eyebrow lilting into a superior curve and a sneer forming upon his lips, but on the inside he was far less collected.
 
A demon! Another like him, but ostensibly different in this wholly fundamental, sly way that he couldn’t even begin to understand. And a Knight of Hell, at that. Wow-ee.
 
Seeming very much like a hellhound that had just been foolishly whacked upon the nose with a newspaper, the man across from him blinked and snarled, his face turning exceptionally unfriendly as his hold on his knife shifted into a white-knuckled grip. Well, too bad. Crowley dusted off his sleeves with apparent distaste, the tinted lenses of his sunglasses sliding down his nose before he righted them with a long-suffering sigh.
 
Crowley was entirely serious about dinner. He wasn’t going to let himself get viciously murdered before he had at the very least enjoyed a delightful little quiche or something. This creature, this ‘demon’, might be swarming with all sorts of hellish intent on the inside, and he might just be the spitting image of a person finely chiseled into a warrior of some repute, but let it never be said that Crowley didn’t have his priorities straight.
 
Still, he was very certain that the other could dance circles around him in combat— besides, someone who could move so absurdly fast, like a swallow darting through a thorn bush, was not a person he would relish making an enemy of. If this man, covered all in grime and dirt as he was, was truly a Knight of Hell as he claimed to be, then it would be even more unwise to do so.
 
“Say,” Crowley said, shifting warily as the other came within polite conversation distance once more. “Why are you all covered in sand? The heat get to you?”
 
Winchester chuckled in a way that sounded more like a croak than a laugh, an almost boyish quality settling about him before a sinister, reminiscing curl that promised very bad things spread upon his lips. “Buried alive. Funny thing is, that’s not the first time that has happened to me.”
 
“Ah,” Crowley hummed, shrugging. He wandered around the side of the Bentley and ducked inside, his voice becoming muffled as he went. “How wonderful for you. I’m sure we can talk all about it in the car. Once you’ve dumped all of that sand out of your shoes, of course.”
 
Of course, the rest of the sand clinging to him would likely remain no matter what Crowley said to him. The demon could almost feel as hundreds of sand granules became irreversibly lodged in the seat as Winchester slid in, and it took nearly all of his willpower and a cheery nonverbal pep talk not to break into hysterics right then.
 
It’s just a few bits of sand. Nothing at all to worry about. Just sand.
 
Crowley’s jaw clenched. The engine purred to life, keening and hot like a live wire; the wind was high and full of electrical crackling, the sky divided into thick, long stripes of gold and russet, as if something just over the horizon were dictating the very movements of the clouds.
 
An oddly nervous glance transpired between him and the cassette player, considering, and then they were speeding off across the gliding desert sands, following the deep set of a tire’s tread. Ever mindful of the languorously growing horizon burning ahead of them, Crowley reached across to fiddle with it only to find that a hand of conflicting interest had beaten him to the punch.
 
Without thinking much of it, he swatted the other demon’s arm away, only proceeding for a half-second more before realizing what he had done. Luckily, the other party seemed just as surprised by this as Crowley was. Like two quarreling gamblers, however, each in turn looked off in a different direction through the sand-splattered windows, for neither knew of the full arsenal the other carried with them.

A warbling tune, long and low and furling up into the sky like a great stream of cirrostratus vapors, all at once burst from the cassette player:

"Don't stop me now— I'm having such a good time, I'm having a ball—"