As a demon, it was expected that Crowley have at least a passing familiarity with all seven of the deadly sins – and by expected, he meant compulsory.

He’d given them all a fair shot over the years, and had really found his stride with most. Sloth was simple enough – despite being such busy little creatures, humans had a healthy (in his opinion) appreciation for sitting in the sun and doing absolutely nothing for hours on end. Gluttony and greed, too – Crowley himself had a deep love and respect for the finer things in life, and no qualms about inspiring the same in others. Pride – well, he certainly knew the value of a bad job well done1. Wrath wasn’t something that Crowley himself was overtly fond of, but it was so terribly easy to push humans right up to (and then well past) that breaking point. Similarly, he didn’t personally have a great deal of experience with envy – when you can miracle up anything in the world you really want, there’s not much point fussing over what other people have – but there were plenty of people over the years that had stared at him with envious eyes.

Lust was a little trickier.

Crowley liked to think he’d given it a fair shot, and overall, had found it enjoyable enough. The problem, he thought, was that it wasn’t really enjoyable enough to be worth the effort he had to put in to making sure he had all the necessary parts present and in working order.

Besides, lust was the sort of thing humans could really teach Hell a thing or two about. They’d whittled it down to something of an art form over the years without any sort of demonic help – the invention of pornography was a perfect example. Mostly, Crowley sat back, watched them go about their business with mild bemusement, and wrote up the occasional exaggerated report to send back Down.

All of this was a rather long-winded way of saying that when Crowley described something as being ‘better than sex’, he was mostly doing it because he’d really got into the swing of human turns-of-phrase. Crowley thought there were plenty of things better than sex, including – but not limited to – vintage wine, lunches out, warm summer afternoons on a park bench, being comfortable enough to do away with his glasses, finding typos in old books2, and, of course, sleep.

Something which he was, unfortunately, no longer partaking in.

 ***

1 – And, for that matter, a good job poorly done