Is smoked meat supposed to be spicy?

[hellbentley]

[cw: coughing up a little blood.]

[Crowley is not a big eater. He'll drink like a fish, but food, well, for the most part it's just not one of his preferred guilty human pleasures. Occasionally he'll indulge in an expresso (black as his soul, if he had one), or something dark and rich and bitter like a dark chocolate tart, but only ever rarely.]

[Aziraphale is the one that thoroughly enjoys eating and Crowley usually prefers to just watch him enjoy himself.]

[Sleep, on the other hand? Sleep is amazing. He's slept a whole century before just for the simple pleasure of it.]

[So right now he's hanging out near the woods - it stings to be so close to the Heartstone - his mirror expanded. He's looking at a bit of smoked jerky he's been handed in a little paper wrap, grimacing slightly at how unappetizing it looks.]

Far be it for me to insist on five star dining in the great big useless bloody wilderness, but do we at least have something else to go along with this? I'm...a bit of a picky eater.

[It's believable. He's a very slim, leggy man, someone that looks like he may indeed be very picky about his food.]

Like...fruit? Don't eat much fruit, but I've heard good things. I've known a few people who just couldn't say no to fruit.

[His little joke. He tosses a small bit of the jerky in his mouth, just a little bite. It's not on his fingers long enough to sting. He barely chews it or this might have gone down better, might have let him spit it out with just a burned tongue before absolute disaster. He could've just played it off as being disgusted.]

[Dean had helped Kon brine at least some of the meat with his already-purified holy water. That meat had been smoked into some of the jerky, and even though the water evaporated off, it consecrated the salt left behind. Normal salt never hurt him, but blessed salt on the other hand...]

[Maybe it's not as potent as pure holy water or he'd have burned up from the inside almost instantly, but it's bad.]

So did anyone happen to find any - [He suddenly gags. Then bows over as he chokes.]

[It's not normal choking because he shouldn't have been able to get any words out at all at first.]

[It's not normal choking because most of the time when people choke from a bit of food they don't start coughing up blood. His teeth are instantly stained from it.]

[It's not normal choking because most of the time when people choke they don't start smoking from the mouth.]

[He wheezes like someone going into anaphylaxis, and falls to his knees so sudden and hard that his glasses become slightly loose. He coughs so hard they fall right off.]

[Finally, after a few hard wheezes she manages to cough it up, with a mouthful of blood. His voice is locked into a wheeze and he keeps having to cough and spit little gobs of blood. It's not as bad as the initial bit of it - mostly superficial blood vessels in his throat burst.]

Who made this? What did you put in it? What did you do?

[It's only then that he's able to notice what just happened. That the world is suddenly less dim. He holds a hand to his temple and realizes his eyes are visible - yellow and snakelike. And he starts looking for his glasses in the shadowy grass. His vision is still recovering from the darkness that crept in from the edges as he went without oxygen.]

Ahhh...

[He segues into a lie.]

...How embarrassing. Everyone now knows about my horrific eye condition and deadly food allergy. All connected, I'm afraid. Immune disorder.

[He is so fucked.]