No Exit

[Ada Wong]

After the little incident at the campsite, Crowley began to feel a tad uneasy. The skies in the distance were growing into gradually more and more pronounced streaks of shattering, ugly color the further they rolled towards them. It almost made him miss the regular old monotony of before, going cross-eyed as he attempted to pinpoint just where one dune ended and another began.
 
A screaming burst of fire seemed to peal out from under the mess of gases and dust intermingling up ahead, only about fifteen short minutes away. The demon watched, morbidly fascinated, as it plumed back upwards in a mushroom cloud of burning haze.
 
Tearing his eyes away from the oncoming storm for but a moment, Crowley turned to face Dean. The other demon appeared to be distracted by something in his lap, a gun or some other similar contraption, and the crimson blood lining his arms still shone from being sticky and wet.
 
“Er,” Crowley ventured, trepidation coloring his voice, and Dean glanced up. “Is that normal?”
 
The Winchester’s eyes slid to the tempestuous horizon, considering and alight with interest. His head tilted a bit, unhurriedly, and his lips plucked up into a daring grin.
 
“Yeah,” he said, returning to the cleaning of his gun. “Happens all the time. Totally not dangerous. We should be through it in an hour, tops.”

Crowley decided to take his word for it. The Bentley sped onward, trailing thick plumes of dust in its wake.
 
---
 
A pocket of congealed air burst, roiling winds interspersed with fiery, spluttering rockets of blackish smoke cycling in waves of heat around them like a cyclone. The Bentley streaks through it, riding the current on a spasmodic stripe of burning rubber.
 
They had entered the storm an hour before. Dean— because he was Dean to Crowley now, not just Winchester, although “pain in the ass” might have been a more suitable moniker— with an unshakeable brand of confidence that Crowley envied and Crowley with a good, healthy amount of shrill hissing as he fought with the steering wheel to keep them on the right track.
 
Their situation hadn’t improved much since that point onward, Crowley feared.
 
Only the barest hints of the trail could scarcely be glimpsed through the wash of sand hurtling against the windshield. At times, it felt as if they were drifting sideways; at others, plummeting from some great, gut-wrenching height. There was assuredly enough tossing about to make even an experienced seaman nauseous. Patches of what looked like charring speckled the steely edges of the Bentley’s front as it tore along, glimmering as the mast of a ship would through an electric corona of St. Elmo’s fire.
 
With a hiss and a buzz that coiled and spun like an expulsion of lightning-rimmed grapeshot, the ash-colored vehicle rose fast over the scalloped curve of a dune, running along for about forty or fifty yards more.  The steering wheel felt warm and slippery as a minnow; a strong smell like that of rotten eggs trailed after it, an eruption as strong as a hundred cannons discharged at the same time spiraling out of sight behind them in a scorching red rupture.
 
Quite suddenly it became very dark, sound exploding like a dozen shells along the metal roof over their heads, and Crowley took this precious lull in flare-ups to turn and scowl at Dean. Only the stark outlines of his lowered eyebrows were visible above his shades, a few traces of unstable light charting his displeased stare.
 
“What?” Winchester guffawed, teeth flashing a bright white in the gloom of the cabin. “You thought I was being serious? Christ, gimme some credit.”
 
Crowley’s scowl deepened as he was made to swerve around a soaring pellet of fire, watching with wide eyes as it rebounded like a ping-pong ball and skittered across the hood. “You said this kind of thing happens all the time!”
 
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think you’d actually steer right into the middle of it just to save a little time. Not that I’m complaining, though— this is some Mad Max shit!”
 
The fallen angel audibly grumbled, baring his teeth as he refocused on the road ahead once more. If it could have even been referred to as such; what had once been a loose track of upturned sand where Dean’s bandits or whoever had been was being swept away by a freak sandstorm, just as Dean had jokingly hypothesized. It’s just peaches and cream, really.
 
There was a brief stutter underneath his tires, like a speed bump or—more plausibly— a rock, and Crowley sharply angled the wheel to accommodate the inertial shift. A brief waft of darkness and howling winds brushed over them one last time, bright and hot, before the tempest withdrew with hardly a sneeze.

They were finally clear of that hellhole, the sky spread out before them in a blissfully serene robin's egg blue.

Crowley slumped somewhat over the steering wheel in relief, his shoulders going rigid once more as he turns to see Dean giving him a lopsided grin, snickering like a person who snickers a lot.
 
“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Crowley sniffed, straightening up and letting his slanted eyes slide back towards where their path should be. “That was ghastly. Worse than being trapped in a conference with a gassy Beelzebub.”
 
Dean shrugged and scratched the back of his head, still grinning a bit. “Heh. That sounds hilarious.”
 
There were still rust-colored specks of dried blood staining his hands and pant legs, and Crowley made a mental note to never let a blood-stained Dean into his car again. Ever. It would likely take him weeks to get those stains out of the seat.
 
Crowley snorted out an indignant huff. “It really isn’t, if you must know.”