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LONDON- 1862
The silence in the room was heavy.
An angel and a demon had been drinking. Joking, arguing, conversing. Jackets had come off and hung limp over the backs of their chairs. The normal routine. But something had changed.
The demon had let something slip out.
"What?" Aziraphale asked, cutting through the silence.
Crowley panicked.
"Nothin!" He said, laughing lightly. "Jus a joke, Angel."
Crowley’s words echoed in Aziraphale's head. Every time he thought that they'd left, they swung back around. His stomach twisted into knots.
"If I come back without the soul of that Governor next week, they'll put me on the rack. Again."
Crowley tilted his glass around, staring at the wine just a little too hard. Aziraphale, not for the first time, wished he could see the demon's eyes. At least then he would have some insight into what Crowley was thinking.
"You know, wine doesn't taste at all like grapes. Why is that? I mean, you'd think that at least some of the flavor-"
"Have they tortured you?" Aziraphale blurted.
Crowley looked up too fast, and his glasses slid down over the bridge of his nose. Aziraphale caught a glimpse of his eyes, and he saw fear. Uncertainty. Fear. Guilt. Fear.
Crowley reached up and pushed his glasses back into place, clearing his throat. Aziraphale's grandfather clock ticked.
"S'no big deal. Humans do it to each other all the time. Besides, nothin' they can do to me that can't be fixed."
Aziraphale wanted to reach out, to touch Crowley. To hug him. To tell him that… that he was never going to let Hell hurt him again.
But he knew that he couldn’t. That would be impossible.
So, instead, he tried to do what he could. He tried to lessen Crowley's burden, take some of his pain. Give him an outlet, no matter how badly it would hurt Aziraphale to hear it.
"...how bad is it?" He asked, quietly.
Crowley flinched, shaking his head. He settled back down again, sinking further into the chair with a huff.
"That bad?" Aziraphale asked. He tried to make it sound like a joke, but his voice was shaking.
He looked down at the waves his shaking hand was making in his glass.
By the time Crowley finally spoke, Aziraphale had already assumed he'd gone and ruined the evening.
"... You know how humans have that expression, 'I'll make you wish you were dead'?" Crowley asked. His voice was hoarse, tense. He twitched in on himself, his feet pulling up to hug his knees to his chest. His wine glass was set on the table next to him.
"Yes." Aziraphale said, slowly.
"It's like that, but worse."
It's another inappropriate attempt at humor. It was a little known fact that the demon Crowley invented telling a joke about your trauma that doesn't land.
Crowley reached up to run his fingers through his short hair. Aziraphale knew that he couldn't handle the topic much longer, and he had the good sense to laugh, playing it off as he tried to think of a new topic. It wasn't easy, not with Crowley's words echoing in his head.
He didn't find it funny.
~~~
Aziraphale stared down at the note, flashing back to the conversation, not even a week old.
He shoved it back at Crowley like it burned him. In case… in case things go pear shaped . What, did he think that Aziraphale was an idiot?
You know how humans have that expression, 'I'll make you wish you were dead'?
Crowley was going to use the holy water if he was ever going to get dragged down to hell again. He was going to completely erase himself from existence, and then Aziraphale would be alone.
"I'm not giving you a--a-- suicide pill!" He exclaimed, marching away.
It’s like that, but worse .
He could hear Crowley cursing softly to himself as he walked away.
He turned back just in time to see a small, flickering flame land on the lake. The note burned, and Aziraphale forced himself to turn back around. He wasn’t going to look back. He couldn’t let himself feel guilty.
~~~
Aziraphale didn't see Crowley for eighty years.
It wasn't hard for the angel's imagination to run away from him.
The days would pass one after another in ceaseless succession, and Aziraphale would find anything he could to keep himself busy. He talked to customers, tracked down book after book, took up a thousand different crafts, and learned the gavotte. In the back of his mind, he was still thinking of Crowley.
Was he alone?
Were they hurting him now?
Aziraphale tried not to let his mind get too caught up in the details.
Aziraphale received a letter from heaven and set off on a short vacation. He fixed a church and cured a case of consumption.
(What could they be doing to him? Aziraphale's brain tortured him by bringing up gruesome possibility after gruesome possibility, the slow, all-consuming pain that he felt certain in his darkest hours Crowley must be feeling).
Aziraphale reorganized his book shop. He went through every title, organizing them by author, genre, year, color, edition, and whether or not he liked them, and then decided to set things back the way they were.
(He had been selfish, he realized. So afraid of losing his best friend that he didn't care about what could happen to Crowley if they decided not to let him back topside. What kind of life would that be? Who was Aziraphale to judge him for wanting to have an out when an eternity of torture was on the table?).
A new Thai place opened up across the street, and he ate there every night for a week straight. The woman who owned it made polite conversation with him, and he found her company enjoyable.
(When he closed his eyes, he would swear he could hear Crowley screaming).
Aziraphale broke down sobbing at night when he couldn't concentrate on anything but his certainty that Hell had him, and Aziraphale wasn't going to be getting him back. That Aziraphale’s selfishness, his inability to cope with the idea of a world without Crowley, was causing Crowley to be tortured.
Aziraphale blamed himself. Whatever Crowley was going through right now, it was his fault. He might as well be holding the knife.
~~~
Aziraphale found out that Crowley forgave him when he handed over a case full of books that Aziraphale wouldn’t have been able to replace.
Aziraphale had been tempted to point out that Crowley was also responsible for the other thing he would never have been able to replace; his best friend.
~~~
Aziraphale carefully balanced a thermos full of holy water. He grounded himself, closing his eyes and imagining his feet were made of lead.
When he opened them again, he was already walking across the street. His hand dropped to the familiar door handle, and he tugged it open. Climbing inside, he tucked the thermos in his shirt.
Crowley had already dropped in earlier to say hello. Aziraphale had almost sobbed with relief when he left. It had come out during the conversation that the eighty years Crowley had been missing, he had been napping .
He had been napping . That stupid idiot had been napping for eighty years.
Aziraphale was desperate to believe it. So he did.
The guilt of the torment he had felt certain Crowley was experiencing had abated, somewhat. But you couldn't erase a hundred years of anxiety with the snap of your fingers. Aziraphale knew that he was at fault. He… He wanted Crowley to have an out.
Letting his best friend be tortured for eternity just because Aziraphale couldn't live without him would be selfish. So, incredibly selfish. Crowley deserved better than that. And Aziraphale would have to trust that Crowley wouldn’t use it if there was any chance he would be returned to earth.
So, Aziraphale handed him the thermos.
And he prayed Crowley would never have to use it.