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Lord Hastur, Duke of Hell, Fiend of the Great Pit and Manager of Accounts Payable, was currently lying in what might dramatically be referred to as a crater, but was really just a large and roughly demon-shaped divot in the sedgegrass. His toupee was about a half a meter behind him and was very much on fire.
About fifty meters in front of him, a petrol station, or at least what was left of one, burned like the heart of a star. A very small star, to be sure, but quite a hot one. Also one that had gone up much faster and much more forcefully than a demon without much experience with things like gasoline fumes or non-Hellfire-based combustion might expect.
Hastur was beginning to realize why the Dark Council had spent so long excusing Crowley’s eccentricities instead of terminating him and sending someone who didn’t have his liabilities instead. He looked up into the mostly-cloudy night sky and groaned, “Why did I volunteer for this again?”
“To get a breath of fresh air, for once, I expect,” said an astonishingly cool voice somewhere in the vicinity of the leading edge of the crater.
Hastur tried to scramble to his feet and failed in several ways at once. His feet didn’t seem to want to point the right way, and when he put his weight on them, something in his right leg screamed at him; when he thudded back to the ground in a heap, his head swam ferociously and his eyes watered. “What’s the matter with me?” he blurted, trying to steady his head with his hands and knocking his toad askew.
“You have a concussion,” said the voice, which sounded familiar, “and at least one broken bone. That body may be quite tough, but even it has its limits.”
Blinking, Hastur tried to make his eyes focus. The red-orange light from the fire was fading, making it harder. “Oh,” he grunted, “you’re Crowley’s favorite angel, aren’t you.”
“Well, I’d like to think so, anyway,” Aziraphale preened. If being recognized by a Duke of Hell was anything other than flattering, he didn’t show it.
Hastur gave up on getting his head not to spin. “So what now?” he asked, laying back down. “Bucket of holy water to the face? Got your flaming sword on you, to finish the job?”
“Neither, at least not tonight,” Aziraphale replied, glancing back over his shoulder. “Why on Earth were you blowing a petrol station in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but dry stone walls and sheep pastures as far as the eye can see, to smithereens?”
“Why would I tell you that?” Hastur was honestly puzzled. Did the angel actually expect him to answer?
“Because the other option is letting Crowley pry it out of you,” Aziraphale said with entirely too much cheer, “and I don’t have any bad memories of you to put an ugly spin on things. I understand that he does?”
“I suppose so,” Hastur replied, half smiling. Good to know that Crowley did fear him, at least a little, still.
Aziraphale waited for a minute, his impatience visibly increasing by the second. “Well?” he finally asked.
“I’ll wait,” Hastur said, smiling incongruously despite being in a considerable amount of pain. “I want to see if Crowley still has it in him.”
Flinging his hands in the air, Aziraphale snorted, “Oh, for Heaven’s sake. Just tell me and I’ll fix your leg so you can go home.”
“No!” Hastur recoiled. “I can’t! Not yet!” He could feel his control over this incarnation slipping; had the explosion really damaged it that badly? He didn’t think he was bleeding anywhere, although if it was internal it was entirely possible he might not have noticed.
“Oh?” The angel looked confused. “Why not?”
“Assuming he’s not done yet,” a more familiar voice said, “it’s because if he returns without completing his mission, his debrief will include a significant amount of torture.” A familiar pair of dark glasses swam into focus; the red glow from the petrol station was gone, with the only light remaining coming from the smouldering remains of the toupee. “Hello, Hastur.”
“Don’t you go around hello-ing me,” Hastur snapped. “Traitor.”
“Twice over at this point, yes,” Crowley replied, as if he hadn’t just been insulted. Turning to Aziraphale, he asked, “How bad’s the leg?”
“Well,” the angel replied, scowling, “he has at least one compound fracture, and if he could fix it himself, I imagine he would have by now. Are his eyes supposed to look like that?”
“Yes.” Crowley squinted at him in the dim light. “He’s not supposed to look so purple around the middle, though.”
Hastur contemplated melting into a swarm of maggots. He wasn’t sure it would help. Worse, though, he wasn’t sure he had the concentration left to do it correctly, and if he did it wrong, he could just melt, period. It still might be better than listening to these two blather.
And there was - something else. Something that made Hastur’s innards squirm. Something that the angel carried around him like an aura, but that had gotten so much stronger when Crowley had approached. It burned a little, and it simultaneously felt holy and something like a sin, one of the big ones. Definitely not Wrath, although that was Hastur’s favorite. No, this was something closer to . . .
His eyebrows went up. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “No, no, no. That’s - an abomination!”
Aziraphale peered down his nose at the demon. “What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice slightly more abrasive.
Hastur tried to draw away from the pair and immediately regretted it, winding around his broken leg like a ball of barbed wire instead. “You can’t,” he grated, staring at Crowley. “They took it from you! From us, they took it away from from all of us!”
“Maybe,” Crowley said, glancing away. “Maybe it grew back.” He looked back at Aziraphale, and his expression visibly softened. “Maybe it was given back. Or maybe,” and he straightened his spine and let the shadow of his wings glimmer through to Hastur’s occult perception, “just maybe, I decided I wanted it back, and claimed it.”
“What are you - oh!” Aziraphale smiled, stepped to Crowley’s side, and laced his fingers through Crowley’s, clasping their hands palm-to-palm. “Yes,” he said, and ethereal light glimmered around him. “He can. And I do. And I am so, so glad of it.”
The gesture was small, but as Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hand, and Crowley returned the gesture, the wave of love that poured off of them slammed into Hastur like a wall crumbling. The Duke of Hell scrabbled at the ground as if he were being blown away a second time that evening, then sank into it like quicksand and disappeared.
“Well, now we’ll never get an answer out of him,” sighed Crowley as he went to stamp out the remaining embers of Hastur’s wig.
Aziraphale glanced back at the remains of the petrol station. Crowley had been getting remarkably good at extinguishing fires recently. “If you’re sure he was sticking around to try to finish the job,” he said, “then all we really need to do is keep an eye open. Whoever they send next is likely to be even worse at this.”
“Nice to know I wasn’t easily replaced, I suppose,” Crowley said with a smirk. “Any chance you could miracle the owners some better insurance?”
“Or at least a sympathetic adjustor,” Aziraphale agreed, nodding. His eyes went back to the Hastur-shaped hole in the dirt. “So strange. Even he was an angel, once, too, wasn’t he?”
“He was.” Crowley looked uncomfortable. “He was a Dominion, before. Did a lot of work on Mars, if I’m remembering correctly.” He looked up, tracing the paths of the planets through the thickening cloud cover.
“I wonder what he was like, then.” Aziraphale seemed to shrink in on himself, a little.
Crowley paused, searching for words. “A lot like Sandalphon is now, as I understand it,” he finally said. “Only a lot taller.”
“Ah. Yes.” Aziraphale shuddered and tugged his coat closer around him. “That would make sense.”
Crowley wrapped an arm around his waist. “You still don’t remember any of it?” he asked, his voice much softer.
“Not really. I got a flash of something when Beelzebub showed up, but then I lost it in all the confusion afterwards.” Aziraphale raised one hand to Crowley’s face, brushing away a bit of soot.
“That would make sense,” Crowley agreed, catching Aziraphale’s hand in his own. “They were pretty important before, too.” He glanced up, then down. “Look, the firefighters are going to be here shortly. We should probably find someplace else to be before we become arson suspects ourselves.”
“Yes, we should go someplace quieter to regroup.” Aziraphale considered their options, then brightened. “I believe we passed a small Lebanese restaurant on the way here; could we-”
“Does just being in the presence of a demon make you hungry, angel?” Crowley groaned. “Never mind, don’t answer that, it would look that way to me whether or not it was true, wouldn’t it? Sure, fine, let’s get some hummus and see if I can figure out who they’re likely to send to finish the job.”
“And some olives,” Aziraphale added, letting Crowley lead him back towards the car. Sirens wailed in the distance.
While some part of him was still bristling at the word abomination, coming from a demon, and that demon, of all people - there was something quite nice about knowing Crowley’s love was so strong that even those who feared it could see it so clearly. “I wonder if that would have the same effect on Sandalphon,” he wondered out loud.
“Let’s hope we don’t ever have to find that out,” Crowley grumbled as he climbed into the driver’s seat. A flush crept across his cheeks; he gave Aziraphale’s knee a squeeze as they closed the doors and drove off, past the last wisps of rising smoke.