It has been 14 hours since I found out that, according to Kubo, Byakuya calls Renji by his given name "because Rukia does" and I am obsessed with this information.
This is both the best and worst possible answer to this question. I feel like if you asked Byakuya, this is exactly the reason he would give. However, if Rukia were present, she would lose her damn mind. While I do think Rukia's assertion that Byakuya didn't look at her even once in 40 years is hyperbole, over that time I can imagine Renji's name coming up in conversation once, maybe twice tops.
Like, two weeks before she goes on her fateful mission to the Living World, B's been shortlisting Vice-Captain candidates, and over dinner, real casual:
B: Rukia. You know your friend?
Rukia: My who now?
B: That friend of yours who shouts too much. The boorishly tall one. With the red hair. Is he in Squad Eleven now?
Rukia (wracking her brain frantically for people Byakuya would consider 'her friend'): You mean Renji?
B: Yes, him.
Rukia: What about him?
B: Is he in Squad Eleven? The Sixth Seat?
Rukia: ...maybe? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The next day, Byakuya's office, Renji shows up for his job interview.
B: You must be Renji.
Renji: uhhhhhhhh sure why not?
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The LAYERS needed in a modern/human Dreamling au. Some level of Endless family dysfunction, obviously. Hob's family can be be dead or not, it's all good. Are they old enough to have individually gained the awareness they are off-puttingly intense and should hide it a bit at first, or still in that "no, why would I need to Elsa this" stage?
Option A is both of them trying to play it cool, like "don't scare him off" except they so badly want to go from zero to sixty.
(Death and Desire have ruthlessly drilled Dream with flashcards about how to react appropriately in situations.
Desire: it's your one-month anniversary, what do you do?
Dream: [hesitantly] NOT propose?
Desire and Death, conferring, because that's technically correct but the delivery was suspect.
Death, encouragingly: Good start. And?
Dream: a nice dinner and maybe a walk?
Desire: well done!
Death: and for a three-month anniversary?
Dream: give them a key to my flat.
Desire: [airhorn] NO. RED CARD.)
Option B makes them the classic anecdotal "my grandparents got engaged within seven days of meeting each other and still are happy together".
(Death, rubbing her temples: so you met this guy--
Dream: Hob
Death: -- Hob, and within 1 day you gave notice to the Registrar's Office and figured out the best day to get married. And Hob agreed to this?
Dream: NO.
Death: oh thank go-
Dream: Hob SUGGESTED this.
Death: . . .
Dream: are you going to be a witness or not?
Death, 29 days later in the Registrar's Office, to Hob's witness: Is he sane?
Johanna Constantine, drinking heavily from a large flask: unfortunately yes, by all legal definitions.
Death: fuck
Johanna: [passing the flask over] if your brother's even a tenth as intense as Hob, they'll be fine. Probably.
Death, brightening: Is Hob that bad?
Johanna: You know how sometimes you meet somebody and think "oof, they're a bit much, best give them a wide berth"?
Death: yeah.
Johanna: Hob's like a camouflaged hole in the ground of muchness. Except he's done the hole up all nice and he knows that sometimes you just want to be left alone in the hole to sulk and rattle the spikes for a bit, and occasionally get a F&M hamper tossed in.
Death: [hmmmmmmm'ing approvingly]
Johanna, morose: the bastard.
In the background, Hob and Dream are pressing their foreheads together and basking in each other's presence)
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okay I’ve seen a lot of posts about sterling just being crowley and. guys. the implications just hear me out 😭😭😭
bending lore slightly here BUT let’s say crowley’s body was once inhabited by a human and crowley is possessing the body (maybe he kills the initial inhabitant bc he doesn’t care)
but he still has the guy’s memories. he doesn’t bother keeping up appearances with his ‘ex wife’ because he is too busy building up his hell empire. BUT for some reason he can’t quite identify, he still feels something towards his ‘daughter’. he lets the divorce happen and doesn’t feel the need (or desire) to fight for custody, but he can never quite forget her, to cast her out of his mind for good
some hijinks ensue with the leverage team. it’s mostly because even a grind culture demon wants some off time every once in a while, and for him the insurance investigator stuff is more of a hobby. interacting with the leverage crew is very low stakes for him, and honestly, quite amusing. they aren’t on his level power-wise, but that ford character gives him the mental exercise he hasn’t experienced in, well, he can’t even remember
he can feel their frustration and anger when they learn he has become employed by interpol and feeds off it. it’s great, and relaxing in a way he is never able to achieve while conducting hell-related business
one year he gets wind that olivia is in a really bad situation associated with his ‘ex wife’s’ new husband. he’s selling vital hardware to terrorists, and while that might actually be the kind of chaos he would normally support or be entertained by as the king of hell, something feels wrong about letting olivia stay anywhere near that man
he calls upon the body’s adversaries. he wouldn’t admit it, even under duress, BUT he feels slightly fond of them. nate for the three dimensional chess they play, sophie for her ability to charm and disguise, parker for her chaos and slightly unsettling nature (it’s the autism swag and being bad with human interaction but he doesn’t know that lol), hardison for his unapologetic intelligence and eliot for his hardened violent past and take-no-shit persona (he’s fun to tease)
they perform exactly as he expected, right into his carefully crafted plan. and then olivia is under his care and things get more complicated. he keeps her FAR, FAR away from anything related to the supernatural (heh). no one can find out about her, ESPECIALLY not those imbecile hunter brothers (if for nothing else than the embarrassment in revealing he has a weak spot)
not sure how to work it into this post but I also want to add that somewhere along the way he develops feelings for nate and sophie. the frame up job is near and dear to my heart and you can’t convince me that isn’t fighting as flirting behavior. his interpol persona is more of a side hustle so to speak, but he finds it fun (relaxing, even) to fill that role. there aren’t any obligations of other demons, bothersome hunters, or anything like that. nate and sophie are low stakes, except, they aren’t, really. they make him feel things he can’t ever really remember feeling. his heart beats fast when sophie sat in his lap and cradled his face, his hands sweat when nate gives him that certain smug look. he’s exasperated by the way they can run circles around him like no one else has ever before. they annoy him and get under his skin in a way no one else can and it’s infuriating. but also not, at the same time. maybe he likes it
and then the long goodbye job happens
hear me out and suspend your belief here for a second, because I can’t remember if crowley supernaturally knows when ppl die/are dead or not.
so nate is in interpol custody and the interviewer is obviously out of her depth. (most people are, when it comes to nathan ford.) he walks in and pours the man a drink, but he’s fuming. somewhere along the way he came to care about the team. hell and suffering is literally in his (official) job description, but he can admit (only to himself) that he admires what they do. it’s not for him, not anything close to where his passions and interests lie, but he respects their drive and purpose. he is also aware enough to acknowledge that they are a family, a group of misfits that never belonged quite anywhere except to each other.
and nate fucking blew it up, ruined it, because his vice is being so obsessed with the end game that he is apparently willing to let his team, his family, the people that anchor him to reality, die because the ends supposedly justify the means.
not this time. not to sterling crowley
he is enraged. he can admit within the confines of his mind that he cares for nate, for sophie, even for the other three (though nate and sophie have somehow made it a hierarchy where they are more important to him. which he will dissect later in private. maybe.)
nate let them die, he let sophie die, and for what? the black book? hell below, crowley would have made things easier somehow, if he knew that this was where nate’s sights had lied. he would have prevented this somehow. he wants to have prevented this. he doesn’t want any of them dead and is too afraid to check and verify because that would make it real. the idea of sophie (or any of them) somehow making it to hell instead of heaven would probably break something in him he might not be able to reapir fully.
he yells at nate- he’s angry. hellfire burning in his heart because everything is ruined. the deaths aside (however hard it is to set them aside in his mind), nate will not recover from this, not ever. this will be the start of the end, he is sure. a miserable, guilt-ridden existence where he drinks himself to death and nothing will save him. it plays out in crowley’s mind in a thousand different ways that are beyond painful to conceptualize, even in theory.
the story starts to unravel and there is a game afoot. a solemn, miserable, infuriating game because the con is still in session because parker is alive and in the building- which sets another fire alight in his chest. ‘parker even know you got hardison killed?’ he rages for her grief when she finds out. he knows it will double when she finds out eliot has perished, too, because he isn’t fucking blind.
but nate is a brilliant man, lest he forget too quickly. they are all alive, and somehow still the entire crew slips through his fingers. he’s not even angry (he never would have been- he doesn’t actually try too hard to catch them. it’s about the game, not the consequences). he lets them keep the black book because he’s fucking exhausted and honestly, they more than earned it.
‘now we’re even. tell sophie to drive carefully’. they will never be even, not really. crowley would never admit or agree that being human is the superior state of being, but that have made him feel human in a way he doesn’t actually mind. they keep him on his toes and match him in a way unique to them, they remind him that there are other things than the realm of hell. not necessarily bigger than hell, but maybe just as important in a different sense.
watching the van drive away, something inside him settles. when he walked into the interrogation room that day he thought this was the beginning of the end. it’s not the end at all, not an end to anything. it’s a continuation of their story. maybe, he thinks, a beginning to a new era in it
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