Chapter Text
“What did you look like?” Aziraphale asks one night, when they have both had too much to drink and are huddled together on the angel’s well-worn leather sofa. “Before, ah…” he waves a hand loosely in Crowley’s direction, the burning yellow eyes that have come uncovered at some point, and the demon arches an eyebrow.
Aziraphale asks him this sort of question every now and then; what Crowley was like Before, what rank of angel he was, what he remembers. It has not escaped Crowley’s attention that this sort of question seems to pop up whenever Aziraphale feels himself crossing some invisible line, whenever he needs to realign his unexpected lack of distaste for Crowley with his stubbornly entrenched worldview.
Aziraphale, he thinks, has come to the same conclusion that he has: that the two of them are fundamentally cut from the same cloth. But rather than accept that they are both in between, both slightly other— because that, of course, would require some acknowledgement of Aziraphale’s own wrongdoing, his shortcomings as an angel— how much easier, then, to attribute it to Crowley’s celestial origins, and absolve himself of any responsibility.
And Crowley gets it, of course he does, he’s terrified out of his fucking mind half the time, whenever he allows himself to consider just what Down There might do to him if they understood the extent of his transgressions.
But Aziraphale desperately wants some sort of tragic figure, a foolish, misguided angel, because that he could understand, or pretend to, and so Crowley is equally determined not to give him one.
Aziraphale is a bastard. Crowley knows this, likes it, even. But this particular brand of bastardry, the angelic thoughtlessness of it all, is one he thinks he could live without.
Crowley sighs, and takes a deep swig of wine.
“Well, I mean,” he says lazily, “pride is a sin, and all that, but all the same Below didn’t quite have mirrors back then.”
Aziraphale nods. There is something to the tight set of his face that suggests he realizes that this topic might be, ah, distasteful, but he pushes on anyway.
“And… before? That is, really Before.”
Crowley doesn’t dignify this with a response, just shoots Aziraphale a flat, hard look, before going back to the all-important business of seeing just how much wine the human body is capable of consuming without stopping for pesky things like air.
But Aziraphale keeps looking at him in that awful way of his, pitying and patronising at the same time, and Crowley sighs and relents.
“No fucking clue. Happy?”
This is, more or less, what he tells him every time, and it is both a lie and not a lie. He doesn’t remember Heaven, not properly. It’s just that he hasn’t quite forgotten, either.
His first real, clear memory, his first memory as him , is of Falling, screaming and broken and desperate, and it is as sharp and vivid now as it was 6000-odd years ago, head over heels and trailing singed feathers and fire everywhere. Before that, it’s just… fog.
It’s not forgetting, but it’s not remembering, either. It’s vague, no specifics, no name or rank, nothing, Crowley supposes sardonically, that could be used against Heaven. But it isn’t, in itself, nothing, and sometimes he wonders whether that would be better or worse. To have it all be gone, tabula rasa. Because all he has now are feelings, vague and indistinct, the impression of a person long gone. He knows why he Fell, more or less, because he can feel the confusion and the dissatisfaction and the burning knowledge that something wasn't quite right, that he was out of place, and along with that— a naive sort of hopefulness, maybe, that things could be better. But he doesn’t have the logic, the reasoning, or even the moments right before, the thing that actually triggered it. And it’s not… it’s not that he’s forgotten, not really, because it feels as though it’s just on the tip of his tongue.
He knows he’d recognize it if he heard it. His name. He just can’t think of it himself. Or want to, if he’s being perfectly honest. He doubts it would fit him any better than Crawly used to.
Occasionally, very occasionally— and Crowley can admit to himself, by this point, that it’s mainly when he’s around Aziraphale, on long, lazy evenings in the half-dark of his shop where it suddenly doesn’t seem so inconceivable to move slightly closer, to press up against the soft curve of the angel— he feels as though there might have been someone else. Another angel. The ghost of lips on his, of hands intertwined.
Crowley knows enough not to miss Heaven. But when he does get— wistful, as it were, that’s what he longs for. That… companionship. He doesn’t know what would be worse: for that other, nameless, faceless figure to have Fallen, or for them to have remained.
He supposes it doesn’t matter anyway. That it can’t have been all that perfect, anyhow, or he surely wouldn’t have Fallen. Or perhaps they would have Fallen together, would have been together. Either way, it does no good to dwell, because whatever did happen, that nameless figure is long gone.
And he loves Aziraphale, loves him stupidly and irrationally and deeply, and he knows it’s love, because he remembers the feeling. And he would do almost anything to hear Aziraphale say that he loved him, but he will not play the weeping lost soul, the tragic hero.
There’s a difference, isn’t there, between a demon and a fallen angel, and Crowley knows damn well which side of that line he’d rather be on.
Because here’s what Aziraphale will never understand: he doesn’t regret it. Falling. He hates Hell, yes, bitterly; but he hated Heaven too, he knows that much. And at least this way, Crowley found out for himself. He did something, exercised whatever pathetic facsimile of free will it is that he possesses.
And maybe the Fall— that moment of being in between— is as close as he’ll ever get to being human. Maybe.
Time, as it is wont to do, passes.
The world fails to end, and suddenly he and Aziraphale are spending more and more time together, and Aziraphale seems to have stopped asking that sort of question altogether. And it is… nice. And it feels, for the first time, like maybe they don’t have to be an angel and a demon. Like maybe they can just be Aziraphale and Crowley, and that will be enough.
And that’s really all he’s ever wanted.
And then he walks into the bookshop one afternoon, and Aziraphale is sitting on the sofa with the strangest look on his face, and for one awful, lurching moment, Crowley thinks that he’s being recalled. That Heaven are going to punish him for stopping the apocalypse, or for trying to, at any rate. That—
And then Aziraphale opens his mouth, and slowly, carefully, he says a name.
Crowley forgets it the second he hears it, but he recognizes it, of course he does, because it sparks through him, burning his nerve endings, and it feels as though he’s being pulled back— though through what, he couldn’t say, like Falling in reverse.
And for one jarring, frozen moment, less than a heartbeat, it all slots back into place, name and face and place and rank, another hand, held firmly in his, and then it’s all gone again, pulled out of existence, out of his mind and he
does
not
care.
Crowley stares down at Aziraphale in abject horror, because despite the rapidly ebbing tide of memories, despite the fact that he is still solidly, steadily himself, for better or worse, as he looks down at the hunched figure of the angel on the sofa, face alight with something like expectation and something, Crowley thinks with no small amount of dread, that might even be heartbreak, he is hit by a sudden realisation.
Is it remembering, or is it deduction? It is both, in a way; it’s that awful look on Aziraphale’s face, the way that even if the precise syllables of his name slide off his mind, the way that Aziraphale said them, with such care, as if they might shatter on his tongue, remains: as if they’re something precious, intricate spoken pearls. And it’s the feeling of two sets of fingers, intertwined, bursting with sudden, stark clarity against the transient mists of most everything else from back then. A feeling most terribly similar to their clasped hands, back at the airbase, shaking and solid and warm and the one clear, fixed point as the whole bloody universe seemed to be collapsing around them.
The other angel, the nameless, faceless figure that’s dogged his dreams all these long millennia… well, it’s Aziraphale.
Well, of course it is.
And Crowley doesn’t do what he wants to, which is to scream or swear or cry or perhaps all three at the same time, but he blessed well comes close.
It’s not a happy realisation. Maybe it should be, Go— Someone knows there are worse angels to have been in love with— Gabriel springs to mind. But all the same, it’s… Crowley feels terribly exposed, all of a sudden, feels used, almost, because— because he never meant to fall in love with Aziraphale, didn’t choose it, of course he didn’t, it was irrational and dangerous and couldn’t help but be unrequited— for it to have been anything but, he would have had to actually tell the angel how he felt, and of course he’s never had anything like the courage for that, spineless fucking snake that he is.
But it was his love, for all that. It was his , private, as against acceptable demonic behaviour as it was possible to get. In a perverse way, he’d been almost proud of it: proud that he was able to feel love, that he was more than just Hell’s lackey. That this made him closer to being human, somehow. It had been his.
And now it turns out it’s not his love, his feelings, after all, just some dusty remnant of an angel who he’s not. An angel who’s been dead for six thousand years, really.
All this time, and he’s still Heaven’s fucking puppet. Still can’t do a blessed thing, can’t even fall in love on his own terms.
That’s ineffability for you, Crowley supposes. The Great Bloody Plan and he’s tired, so incredibly tired, of being a cog in it.
And, hang on—
“How long,” he says, voice flat and hollow and perhaps a tad smaller than he’d like it to be. “Angel. How long have you known?”
Aziraphale still won’t look at him, not properly, but something in his face seems to break, then, the soft lines of it crumpling in on themselves. He remains deathly silent, and Crowley’s heart seems to have forgotten that it’s really only there for decorative purposes and is thudding desperately against his ribs.
“Aziraphale,” he says, and he says, and there is something desperately wobbly to his voice, “please tell me you’ve only known for a few days. Please. ”
Aziraphale looks up at him, then, brown eyes meeting black lenses, and Crowley doesn’t know if that look on his face is joy or sadness.
“I…” he breaks off, swallows, starts again. “Well, I’ve suspected for a little while, but I only really—” his voice cracks, then, but Aziraphale soldiers on. “— so you are him, then?”
There is something so longing and hopeful to his voice, and Crowley hates it, hates this, hates himself and wishes he could hate Aziraphale like he’s supposed to.
“ No ,” he says, and he shocks himself with the venom of it. And it’s a lie, and it isn’t, because he’s not. He hadn’t been that angel for millennia, or maybe he was never him— they could have been completely separate entities, for all Crowley knows, with only a few shreds of common emotion binding them together. “How long?”
Aziraphale looks down at his splayed hands, his immaculate fingernails.
“It’s— well, ever since the whole apocalypse, I’ve sort of started to— to piece it together. And then I was certain a few weeks ago.”
Crowley nods slowly. A few weeks, months, maybe, then, not long, in the grand scheme of things, not for them, but long enough that all the time spent together recently, since Adam was good enough to restore Aziraphale’s bookshop, feels… tainted, somehow.
But it’s not what he desperately fears, that Aziraphale has always known, these long six thousand years, that whatever this mess of their relationship is has been built on lies and things he’s forgotten, that it’s never really been anything to do with him at all.
Bad as this is, it’s not that, and Crowley is pathetically grateful.
He’s still standing, and he’s not quite sure how, how his legs haven’t given out yet, but the only place to sit would be on the sofa next to Aziraphale, which feels terribly wrong now, for all sorts of reasons. Crowley sighs, and looks over at the bookshop door, the night outside, and wonders if he ought to just sort of make a break for it.
“Do you remember?” Aziraphale asks after a little while, voice so terribly soft.
“No,” says Crowley, still looking at the door. “And I’m not going to. Nor do I want to, to be perfectly fucking honest.”
He doesn’t need to look at Aziraphale to feel the small hurt emanating from the angel.
“Is it such a terrible thought, then?” asks Aziraphale, remarkably composed given the quiet bitterness in his tone. “That you might once have been in love with me?”
And that, really, just about does it.
“Are you taking the piss?”
Aziraphale blinks, almost cartoonishly.
“I— what ?”
“D’you know what’s terrible?” Crowley asks, tone icy, and he can just feel his hiss getting ready to claw its way to the surface, as it always does when he gets upset, “The fact that we’ve known each other for six thousand years, and you won’t even consider the possibility that I could be in love with you now.”
And Aziraphale looks up, eyes wide and impossibly hopeful, and he opens his mouth and Crowley knows exactly what’s about to come out, that he’s going to say again, and he doesn’t think his shattered mind can take it.
He flinches before the barest whisper of sound can leave Aziraphale’s mouth.
“ Don’t ,” he says wretchedly. “Don’t call me that, all right? It’s not— it’s not me, not anymore, and I need you to understand that.”
“But you feel love,” Aziraphale says, a tad unsteadily: he’s stood up at some point, and is standing across from Crowley with the oddest look in his face. “You shouldn’t— you love me .”
“Yes,” Crowley says, “me. I love you, all right? Not some angel who’s been dead for six millennia.”
Aziraphale takes a step closer, places a hand on Crowley’s suited arm. It’s soft, immaculately manicured, of course, and the exact small sort of contact that Crowley would normally be desperate for, only he’s a little too busy having a nervous fucking breakdown to notice.
“But you are that angel, deep down. Demons don’t love, and angels are beings of it— and you love me, you’ve said so— and you clearly remember something…” Aziraphale trails off, tone desperate, hand clenched on Crowley’s arm.
Crowley pushes it off.
“Beings of love,” he repeats, voice acid. “Beings of— how fucking ironic , then, that I love you, and you don’t love me.”
“Of course I—” Aziraphale starts to protest, and Crowley just laughs, high and manic, eyes stinging.
“You don’t love me,” he says, and it hurts. “You’re in love with a six thousand year-old ghost, but he’s gone, all right? He’s gone, and I’m what’s left, and I am a demon, and I love you as a demon, and I’m sorry—” he’s going very fast now, might be shouting, even, but he has to get it out , “— I’m so terribly fucking sorry that that’s not good enough for you.”
Crowley turns to leave. He can hear Aziraphale following behind him, breath coming in little gasps, but it’s suddenly terribly important for him not to be looking at the angel’s face just then.
“ Wait ,” says Aziraphale, desperate, his hand on Crowley’s shoulder, and it would be so easy to turn back, to lean into the easy contact, but pride, after all, is a sin, and Crowley is quite determined to stick to it, because the alternative really is far too pathetic. And for the second time that evening, Crowley pushes Aziraphale off.
“Crowley, please,” says Aziraphale, and he’s almost at the door, almost—
And then agony flashes through him, and he knows Aziraphale’s said it again, and it feels god-awful, reams and reams of memory dumped into his mind and then ripped out again in a fraction of a second, feels like lurching over the landing of a dark stairwell, searching for a final step that simply isn’t there.
All of this hurts less than the knowledge that the last six thousand years of their relationship clearly haven’t mattered at all to Aziraphale, not in the way that they have to him. That he’s just the stand-in, a parasite, almost, a poor replacement for the person that Aziraphale really loves.
That he’s just a demon, after all.
Crowley whirls around, eyes burning with tears or hellfire or both. Aziraphale looks horrified, smaller, somehow, than Crowley has ever seen him. He cannot quite bring himself to care.
“ Fuck you,” Crowley spits, and then he storms out.
It ought, he thinks, to be raining. Or properly dark, at least, so that he can stalk off into the night. It’s neither of these things— a proper summer evening, clear and oppressively hot, not even dark yet. From his Bentley, knuckles tense and white on the wheel, he slowly unclenches one hand and gives a two-fingered salute to the perfectly blue sky.
Heaven isn’t up there, not really, it’s on an altogether different metaphysical plane. But it makes him feel slightly better, all the same.
And then Crowley drives— not to his flat, the sterile emptiness, not just yet. He can’t stomach it. He just drives, until he finds a suitably quiet back alley, where he can be alone for a little while.
And then and only then does Crowley finally let himself cry in earnest.