Chapter Text
"Morning, sunshine," a raspy voice greeted him as its owner held open his right eye, his hand pulling away when he opened the second one himself and made eye contact with the pitch-black orbs staring at him. It took him a long while to recollect himself enough to realize.
"Ugh! Hastur!" he spat out in a mix of panic and disgust, but as he tried to jerk away from the hideous toad demon, he found out his whole body was tied to a flat but slightly tilted table which seemed rather familiar to Teflon. With a frown and furrowed eyebrows, he tried to wriggle his right wrist out of the leather band but to no use. That thing barely even moved. But it wouldn't be Crowley if he didn't turn to the other demon with a shit-eating smirk which showed off his pearl-white teeth and fangs that were way longer than usual for some reason. He'd almost look confident if it weren't for the cold sweat and the quivering corners of his smile. "You plan on frying me or what? If you wanted a piece of me, you could've just asked," he tried to lighten the mood for his own sake as he felt a panic attack knocking on his door.
While the serpent was trying all possible escape plans and finding out none of them worked, Hastur turned his attention to a work table standing in front of the Teflon one, seeming quite busy with whatever it was he was doing. "Looks like that hit on the head was a bit too hard for your fragile little head, was it? Do you remember anything that was decided at the trial yesterday?"
He didn't. The last thing he remembered was him going to bed after dropping Aziraphale off at the bookshop. But he did remember having a terrible dream; He was in Hell, chained up in front of Beelzebub, Hastur, and a bunch of other losers... "Oh, bollocks..." Crowley cursed and his wicked grin was replaced by an almost annoyed frown as Hastur turned around with a Teflon thermos bottle. When Crowley saw the container, he groaned: "Oh, well, aren't you a funny lad."
"'Sentenced to discorporation by acid for committing the murder of demon Ligur.'" he recited the verdict while slowly unscrewing the black cap, sending the criminal's anxiety through the roof and right into Heaven. New beads of cold sweat started forming on his skin and Hastur's dead-serious face and almost-a-whisper voice didn't help it either. "I want you to experience it too, Crowley. I want you to feel the burn just like Ligur did," he growled, his voice getting lower and lower with every word as he walked slowly to Crowley's head, Crowley desperately trying to pull away from both the gross being and the deadly weapon in his hand.
The serpent didn't fear death in the discorporating sense. His vessel has died before and death itself wasn't anything brutal. It was what caused his body's death that scarred him for life; torture. He was soaked in cold sweat at this point, he felt like he couldn't breathe despite not needing to under the extremely tight leather straps. Panic was swallowing his brain like magma, leaving all rational thinking petrified in cold hard stone. "H-hey, hey, hey, we can talk about this. You know it was- it was in self-defense. You two would've killed me if I didn't fight back–"
"We were supposed to bring you back alive! Instead, you murdered your kind and now you'll suffer for it," Hastur spat out in anger and grief, screaming right into the tied down demon's ear and almost spilling the toxic liquid on himself. But when he pulled back, he smiled. "Did you know fluoroantimonic acid is extremely reactive with water?"
Crowley frowned. "I didn't, frankly. Why would I–"
"You're sweating quite a lot. Oooh, that'll hurt. It was supposed to be magic acid, but…" he explained as his arm moved above Crowley's leg and tilted the thermos ever so slightly, spilling just a few drops on his thigh.
The reaction was instant. The demon's tight pants might as well not have been there, that's how fast it burned through them. The sound of sizzling flesh, hissing, and gasping immediately filled the quiet room along with desperate efforts of jerking away from the pain. Gasping then turned into screaming as the acid dug through the tender tissue of his leg farther down, melting every cell, every nerve in its way. Stars were sparkling over his vision from the unbearable pain which along with the tears that flowed into his eyes completely blinded him so and the etch from the salt made him shut his eyes with all his might, making him focus more on the disgusting sounds of his flesh melting and sizzling like a piece of bacon on a pan – the table was Teflon, after all. How fucking funny. – and the stomach-turning smell of the damp cells and burnt fabric.
"What lovely music to my ears! And we haven't even started yet. You're in for a ride, Crowley," Hastur cheered at the loud, painful sounds crawling out of Crowley's throat. His smile was disgusting. It was filled with so much joy, hate, and spite. It made him sick.
Tears were running down the sides of his head and over his tattoo, making his short red hair wet and eyes swollen. He tried to clench his teeth with all his strength to hold in the gasps and screams but failing miserably. His snake eyes were glowing ember yellow in the room thanks to the unbearable stress he was under, the slits hair-wide. The sinews in his neck, as well as pretty much every muscle under the skin of his corporeal form, were all so tense he felt like they'd snap any second.
"Hastur!!" the serpent screamed despite his tightening throat, his word filled with all the rage and hopelessness he had inside him. "You've had your fun, I'm done, you've tortured me to insanity, you can get the job done now, let's get this over with, I'll never kill another demon I swear–"
"Shut your mouth, Crowley. I don't trust you. You need to learn your lesson," the toad demon growled with a stone-cold expression, his hand with the black cap not even flinching.
Crowley's body was shaking with the cold of the cell, the heat of the acidic reaction, and the horrible pain that was slowly but surely pushing his consciousness to the back of his mind, driving him insane. "Hastur, don't," he hissed through his gritted fangs, his tear-filled eyes glued to the bare ceiling. He choked back the word ‘please', he'd die before begging a demon for mercy by even mouthing that bunch of letters. And even after being discorporated on this day– night– whatever the time might've been, he will not even dare think about it.
"I promised Ligur you'll meet justice no matter what. After today, he will rest in peace," his cold dead eyes stared into his soul like two black holes. Just the metaphor sent the taste of bile into his mouth as he remembered he once helped create those. As the Starmaker. "I'll melt off every single limb if it makes you remember your sin."
"Aren't sins what we do?" Crowley yelled back, earning a punch to the face from the demon and a few acidic drops spilling from the bottle and landing right on his left forearm, a bolt of pain shooting through his whole arm as the liquid ate its way through the bony limb. Gasping for air, he let out a throat-tearing scream. If it weren't for the tight leather straps over his whole torso, his chest would be heaving rapidly in efforts of getting as much oxygen into his brain as possible. How easy it was slipping into the human ways of living.
And just like breathing, Crowley did another thing uncharacteristic for demons; love. 'Aziraphale!' Is he looking for him? Does he know he's gone? If they issue him a new body with scars like the last time he got discorporated, will Aziraphale abandon him because he'll see what he's done and how broken he will be after this? He could hide the small scar he earned from a priest in the 14th century during an exorcism but how in the world was he going to hide burn marks all over his body? He's going to be an abomination!
"Hell to Crowley! This will be no fun if you don't pay attention," Hastur broke him back into reality by leaning over him and pressing his free hand against his chest, looking mildly distressed that he isn't the center of his crumbling universe.
The redhead's consciousness was slowly drifting away but he'd be blessed if he let that dirty slimy demon touch him. "Don't fucking touch me," he snarled through his tears and clenched teeth which made Hastur only snicker.
"But how else would I make your vessel immortal for this very moment?" he asked with a disgusting smile and Crowley bet it brought him nothing but joy when his brows twisted and eyes widened.
"You did what now?" he said despite now wanting to know the answer.
"You'll die way too soon if we keep going like this. This way I can melt off whatever I want and it'll grow back."
The horror in Crowley's eyes was indescribable. At that moment, he'd kill for a self-destruct button. He was actually going to break. "You can't do that! That's against the death sentence," he tried to object, his brain fuzzing with frantic panic when he only imagined the days and the weeks Hastur could hold him here for. Months! And the worst thing was he knew Hastur was capable of even years. The anxiety chains around his chest and throat tightened when the image of a worried Aziraphale popped up in his head. His furrowed eyebrows, and a face crooked with concern and fear. What a horrible sight. Worrying his angel was the last thing he wanted to do.
"Oh... I'm not going to keep you here forever, don't worry. I didn't get enough acid for that, and I'm not allowed to get more. Can you believe that?"
"Outrageous indeed," the serpent agreed sarcastically, having slightly gotten used to the pain on his left side which, despite the healed wounds thanks to Hastur's demonic miracle, was still there for some reason.
"The more I'll cherish these moments, though..." his voice drifted off as his gaze was glued to the tilting thermos above Crowley's right hip, the liquid inside slowly tipping over the edge of the bottle and falling right through his body, earning an ear-tearing scream from the tied up demon. "Haha! It's like pissing in the snow!" Hastur cheered over Crowley's cries and the sound of sizzling coming from the damaged flesh, the disgusting smell of burnt human meat filling the damp air of the torture chamber yet again.
It didn't take long for Hastur's miracle to activate. When Crowley tried to look down with his swollen eyes, he could see what he's never even dreamt of; the area where the acid dissolved his vessel was covered in wiggling maggots. Only the sight made Crowley's stomach do barrel rolls, not even mentioning the never-ending feeling of thousands of tiny worms inside him. He tried to wriggle them off but to no avail; he was tied too tightly, and not as he could even move much in such pain. They were only around his hip but he could feel his skin crawl all over his body.
"How does it feel to be an abomination made out of pure filth?" Hastur averted his eyes towards Crowley with a big smile which however quickly fell when Crowley decided to open his mouth to speak again:
"You tell me," he spat out through his painfully clenched fangs before gathering all his strength to actually spit on him with an expression filled with nothing but rage and disgust. It made him quite happy when Hastur flinched at the audacity Crowley still had.
"You just never learn," Hastur growled with a scrunched up face and disappointment in his voice as his hand moved quickly above the serpent's head. With a steady hand and a twitching corner of his mouth, he poured a fair amount over the left side of his chest, over his collarbone, his throat, and stopped above his left eye, all of his flesh melting under the liquid like snow. "Do you?"
Crowley has never felt more degraded, more disgusting. Maggots were crawling all over his body. He was choking on worms that filled his throat and mouth, his skull feeling like some gross, mangled beehive as the worms inside where his eyeball used to be wiggled around while making the grossest sounds he's ever heard, his vessel smelling worse than a rotting corpse in a field ditch on a hot summer Sunday. He could so clearly feel his consciously slowly fading and he was more than okay with that. He craved death at that point more than anything in the world. More than alcohol, more than his Bentley, more than his plants, more than... Aziraphale. 'Just let it be over already,' he pleaded like a child at the dentist.
From his foggy thoughts broke him a sharp pain in his chest, making his falling eyelids snap open and his lungs sharply take in air for the first time after what felt like an eternity, the walls of the breathing organ burning as if the air he was breathing was pure sulfur. A sudden rush of new energy spread throughout his body, and just for a split second, Crowley had hope again. That feeling soon faded, however, because when he looked down at his chest with his one eye he had left, he noticed a large needle sticking out into the air, moving up and down with his now heaving torso as the one strap had dissolved just a few seconds ago. He shot Hastur, who was smiling so widely Crowley thought his cheeks were cut through, a puzzled glare with despair and hopelessness pouring from his eyes in the form of pearls of tears.
"Nobody said anything about adrenaline shots, did they? If it makes you feel any better, I don't have enough acid to keep you here for much longer, so enjoy it while it lasts," he monologued with a smug smirk as he circled around the Teflon table, the thermos tilted ever so slightly to pour the content over Crowley's strapped shins, the acid completely disconnecting his feet from his thighs and if the fact that no maggots appeared that time was any indication, Hastur's demon miracle seemed to had worn off. He hummed over the screams crawling from the other's throat like snakes such as himself, slightly impressed by the endurance of Crowley's mortal vessel. 'Sturdy design. I wonder what for...' he thought to himself as he moved his hand above Crowley's chest and horizontally poured the last bits of the before seemingly bottomless thermos bottle all over, melting his guts through and through.
"It's over," he cooed to the now motionless body in front of him as if he knew Crowley's occult ghost stuck around to witness the damages in all their glory.
It was a literal out of body experience, but unlike in the humans' cases, he knew he wouldn't return in the same flesh shell he left- no, was forced out of. The sight was sickening; the torn sinews, blood, acid, and melted muscle and bone tissue flowing lazily down the tilted table, bruised and places blooded skin under and around the strong leather straps, a gaping hole in his torso where his ribcage, guts, and heart used to be. After inspecting his former body, however, he wouldn't even want to return into it.
From his observation broke him Hastur's quiet raspy voice, indicating Crowley's spirit was finally visible after the discorporation shock: "Heh, you look fucking awful. You're lucky you set your appearance to your former self. Enjoy the look while you still can. Your new body will look way different after this one," he lowly chuckled, raising the container as to show what he meant by 'this one' before uttering a few instructions about his new vessel being ready in a while so he should go to the Corporeal office.
Luckily, the paperwork had been taken care of by the court so he only had to sign his discorporation, and body handover papers.