Chapter Text
Crowley flexes Aziraphale’s hand and looks down at the ropes holding him to the chair. It’s too thin to restrain him, but apparently miracles aren’t frivolous when it comes to punishing an angel who dared to question. He’s not really trying to escape, since that would defeat the purpose of this whole exercise, but he struggles just enough to sell the conceit. He mostly keeps looking back at the ring that serves as a mark of office and as a reminder of who he’s doing this all for. He’s hardly ever close enough for long enough to study all its curves and patina, and he has to remind himself to stop smiling.
They barely touched him this whole time and seemed disgusted whenever they had to. Crowley can feel how this body yearns for contact and knows for the first time that what he’s always read as reticence is really an intensity of affection that’s been earned through millennia of trust. The pit in his gut no longer bears any resemblance to fear. This is anger, pure and simple, and he could easily tear this whole system down with the way he’s feeling, but for Aziraphale’s sake, he doesn’t.
Which single act of treason, Crowley wants to ask, is supposed to be the one that actually averted the Apocalypse? Because there were so many little moments and thoughts and phone calls before he declared he wouldn’t be fighting in any wars, and before he first tried to kill the Antichrist and then gave him a pep talk. But Upper Management doesn’t know about them, or doesn’t think they count, or has fused all these instances into a single mountain of a sin. Whatever it is, he doesn’t dare make it worse by lengthening the charge list just before the big show.
He smirks at all of them, but the face he’s wearing nervously pulls the smile back into neutrality. From the inside it feels like force of habit, like Aziraphale has never been comfortable around them and that anxiety has been written on his skin. The archangels are always ranked against him, too. He’d forgotten that part, the obsession with hierarchy and standing, the need to always have a place apart from the rest.
They fully expect him to just walk into the flames by his own power, which feels worse than anything else so far. Because if he takes those steps it will be used to claim that some part of him knew, deep down, that he deserved to be punished. He asks Gabriel to reconsider, and considers it a mercy, but of course he is laughed at, and of course he takes those few steps. Crowley takes great pleasure in spewing forth flames at the bastards and they let their boundaries down enough to reach for each other in fear. He laughs and basks in the hellfire, but a part of him is terribly sad in the knowledge that they would never do that for Aziraphale.
He resolves to give the angel a rib-crushing hug when they reunite. Or no – he’ll have to take it slow. When they hold hands to switch back, he’ll hold on for just a bit longer than necessary and see how that goes over before proceeding any further.