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It had been a regular Wednesday night in the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop when it happened. They had been talking about nothing and everything for a good hour, and Aziraphale was feeling curious.
“Say, Crowley, do you remember what part of Heaven you grew up in?” he asked. Under normal circumstances perhaps he wouldn’t have asked, but it was late and they’d both had a few drinks (although Crowley had actually opted for ones with low alcohol that night) and Aziraphale figured it was probably a safe question, since he was fairly sure nothing had happened with the War in Heaven until they had both been whatever the angelic equivalent of adults was. “I grew up in the Fifth Quarter, though now that I think about it that’s a strange name for somewhere that’s divided into quarters...”
Crowley frowned. His friend hadn’t really ever asked a question like that. But, thinking back and purposely before things got bad in Heaven, he was fairly sure he knew the answer.
“Uhm... I think it was the Third Quarter, in the Left Branch of it,” he answered. He usually indulged the angel in conversation, but with this, he didn’t particularly want Aziraphale to dive right into that part of his life.
After all, it hadn’t all been sunshine and rainbows, despite all the stars and different colored gasses he had handled at the time. The first few “years” were fine enough, but he didn’t like to think about them often because of how things had changed for the worse after that.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked. Realizing he hadn’t heard the question the angel had asked, Crowley looked up, vaguely embarrassed.
“Oh— sorry, must’ve tuned out by accident,” he scrambled internally for an explanation, “I just remembered that I forgot to water my plants and uhh.. was trying to remember what amounts each needed. What were you saying?”
Aziraphale repeated his question about whether he thought that penguins had originally been planned to be able to fly or not, and Crowley replied with a noncommittal keysmash of a sound and a shrug, before Aziraphale launched right back into talking about what he thought about different organisms’ designs.
Planning... design... those were also things Crowley had been taught as a very young angel, practically a kid. How to weave gas together and put the exact amount of matter in the right places to make it all come together into a piece of art. Which gasses went together. What kinds of stars to make where. It was all very beautiful...
And then they had started getting stricter. He’d had to start having a uniform, a corporation and robe, but figured out how to draw it up tighter around himself so it didn’t get in the way. It was as if he’d only just the day before been teaching the other angels in his group how to do the same.
But things had not gotten better. Eventually, he got reprimanded for asking why there was a rule against asking questions. There were more reprimands after that, crueler and more patronizing. He only wanted to know.
As he had gotten a little older, Crowley, or well, not-yet-Crowley, had decided that he was getting fed up with the older angels trying to make up useless, pointless rules just to control them.
And the next thing he knew, he was mid air, hurtling through multiple layers of reality, his molecules being ripped apart and reassembled before being torn apart again. His skin felt like it was being rubbed by sandpaper as it fizzled out and in of existence. His soul was burning as he fell, and it hurt horribly.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked, apparently for the second time. The name felt wrong. It felt alien, distinctly not-him. He looked up, knowing that if he didn’t answer, the other angel would ask questions.
“Sorry, ‘m just tired. Could we watch some reality show instead?” he heard himself say. The voice was all wrong, for one. It was close, but too rough, nearly grating.
“Um, of course, but are you feeling okay?” Aziraphale asked with a concerned look.
“Yes, I’m okay, I’m just really tired and I’ve got a headache. You know how those make me,” he explained, “I think I’m going to sober up a bit, alcohol doesn’t mix well with that.”
After doing so, which left a weird taste in his mouth, he went back to his thoughts. He was prone to headaches making his brain slow and hard to think with, that much was true, but whatever was happening he was sure alcohol wouldn’t help.
Either way, he couldn’t bring himself to ask the questions bouncing around in his head. He’d learned that lesson the first time when his wings were lit aflame and he was cast out, wind and light and matter and not-matter tearing into his corporation.
Dear Someone, he had only been a kid... Only a fledgling asking questions about why things were the way they were. They used to praise me for asking questions, he thought as a hot pressure started to build up behind his eyes and nose at the realization and feelings of shame and confusion and betrayal flooding his mind.
Oh no, no no no, he thought, I can’t cry now! The memory of disapproving older angels mocking his tears came to mind. But why can’t I cry? I’m not grown up yet, why can’t— no, don’t ask questions, you can’t ask questions, that’s what’s got you into all this in the first place, he thought to himself, trying to sniff without being noticed as he curled up smaller into the corner of the couch and tucked his legs up to his chest.
Aziraphale laughed as someone on the antiques show he had turned on wildly misunderstood the purpose and origin of an odd, geometric object with little spheres on the points (it was close enough to a reality show. After all, it was a show about reality, and Crowley didn’t seem to mind his choice in channels) “Oh you couldn’t be more wrong! Crowley, look, this man— my dear boy, what’s wrong? Are you crying?”
The redhead shook his head fiercely, and sniffed. Demons didn’t cry. Well, no, he wasn’t a demon. He knew logically he was, but he didn’t feel like it. Angels didn’t cry either. So what was he? The name still felt wrong. Oh, this was getting far too confusing.
The angel scrunched his face up as he sobered up, and then got up from where he had been sitting for the past hour or so —across the room to the side of the pile of limbs currently sitting on the couch— and halfway knelt in front of the couch. “You’re obviously not okay, can I at least get you a painkiller or something?”
“What?” he asked, and looked up confusedly with wide, unguarded eyes. Why would he need a painkiller? Oh... the headache he said he’d had. “Um, no, ‘m good.”
“You’re not, and we both know it. Please tell me what’s wrong?” He noticed Aziraphale’s eyes were pleading but only out of concern, and struggled for a moment, trying to figure out whether to trust him.
On one hand, his instincts were screaming at him not to tell the other anything and to go hide if he couldn’t deny any further, but on the other hand, Aziraphale looked so genuinely caring and wanting to be there for him, despite the simultaneous feeling that he very much did Not know the angel in front of him and the conflicting knowledge that he very much Did. “Trust me, I won’t think badly of you, and I’m willing to hear whatever you’re comfortable telling me. I won’t be mad at you.”
That broke him. In a moment, he was in Aziraphale’s arms, wrapping his own tightly around Aziraphale’s soft middle. He hadn’t felt such comfort given to him when he was in Heaven ever since things had become strict.
“I’m so confused, I—“ he started in a high, quiet voice, but voice broke off when he realized it had gone all warbly. It wasn’t as if Aziraphale didn’t know he was crying, but the thought of still speaking and betraying his voice was terrifying. Perhaps he could whisper.
“You can speak if you want, I don’t mind what it sounds like,” Aziraphale said gently, and brought a hand up to stroke the other’s hair.
He started out in a strained whisper, “I was thinking about when I was in Heaven. It was so strict... I couldn’t ask any questions, b-but then I did ask too many and—“ he cut off with a sob, and Aziraphale rubbed his back soothingly.
His breaths hitched as he cried, and eventually devolved into sobs of anguish which hurt Aziraphale’s heart to hear. “It’s okay, my dear, you can let it all out,” Aziraphale reassuringly said, and waved a hand to soundproof the bookshop so his friend didn’t need to bury his emotions even more without worrying about others, just in case. It turned out this was a good idea, as a moment later Aziraphale’s pained friend started talking again.
“I just wanted to know why we had all those rules.. I just wanted to know, and they punished me for it. For curiosity! An’ it hurt so much. The laughing. The glaring. I don’t remember a lot of that time but I know it was bad... An’ then, ohhh and then,” he laughed bitterly, “they decided that instead of answering me they would just rip my soul apart instead! Why would anyone think that’s okay to do to a child?! GOD IT HURT SO MUCH TO FALL” he screamed, clutching at his chest.
He was quiet for several minutes.
Aziraphale only heard a faint, repeated phrase of “I don’t want to fall, I don’t want to fall, I don’t want to fall,” and nearly silent crying as the other’s frame shook uncontrollably from the tension in his muscles.
While he was still comfortingly holding his crying friend close in his lap, Aziraphale shifted his focus to higher plains just to make sure there wasn’t anything else that was contributing to his friend’s current condition that he could address.
And there he was. Aziraphale looked down from his changed perspective, and instead of his friend’s usual snakelike (or his corporation but with his wings showing) true form he saw a small, lanky child, perhaps ten years old, with golden shining skin scattered with black scales, and hair made of multicolored arms of gas. He was wearing a simple white tunic, but it was torn and singed, matching his wings, whose feathers were shifting from black to white and back to black. It was Crowley before he was Crowley, and he was in torment.
Aziraphale’s heart broke for his friend. He should have never been punished for curiosity. He should have never been mocked for not being mature yet. He should have never been forced to endure such pain. He should have never have been pushed to bottle it all up. And Aziraphale was going to try his hardest to help him deal with some of it by giving him a safe place to feel it.
Back in the bookshop, Aziraphale held his friend closer to him and gently rocked them. With every soothing stroke against his arm or shoulder or back, Aziraphale tried to radiate a feeling of safety and acceptance. He spoke quietly. ”You’re safe with me, my dear. That pain is passed, but it’s okay if you still feel it now.”
His friend continued crying, but he seemed more relieved rather than wound up tight as a spring. Aziraphale summoned a tissue box from elsewhere in the bookshop, making sure they weren’t a type that would make the other’s nose raw with too much blowing.
For a long while, they sat like that. On the floor of the bookshop, Aziraphale holding his friend close. He had cried for a long time and used up a lot of tissues, but eventually the tears slowed and wrapped both arms around Aziraphale’s left one in a loose hug as the angel rocked them and rubbed the other’s shoulder, and at some point Aziraphale had summoned a fluffy blanket from a closet and tucked it around them.
Aziraphale didn’t know how much time had passed, but eventually his friend sat up and looked at him. His eyes were unguarded and attentive, and Aziraphale could almost feel the inquisitiveness that he must have had as a fledgling, both then and also apparently now. It was a look that Aziraphale had only very rarely seen on Crowley’s face.
The angel smiled. “There you are. Are you feeling any better?”
His friend nodded tiredly, before mumbling, “Your hair is very fluffy. I wonder how fluffy it would be on a scale of fluffiness?”
Aziraphale laughed. “Probably pretty high up there, I bet. How are you feeling?”
“Um...” the other squinted, trying to figure out a good answer to that. “Tired. My head hurts.” Aziraphale quickly summoned a glass of water from the kitchenette in his flat upstairs, and handed it to his friend who carefully sipped at it before making a strange face. “Water is weird. It’s like the plasma from my work area but flat and tasting like nothing.”
The angel hummed in acknowledgement. He didn’t know his friend had had a work area in Heaven, nor that he had apparently tasted the materials given at one point.
After a minute, he decided it was worth asking the question he had been mulling over for the last few minutes. “Um, Crowley, do you think we could work on some grounding exercises? Just to help you back to being more the present.”
His friend shook his head in rekindled distress. “N-no, I don’t think I could, I don’t—“ his breath hitched, and he rubbed at his eye with one hand to try to stop tears. “I don’t think I’m ready to be grown up yet. Too much focus, too much— ‘M sorry, I just—“
“Oh no no, it’s okay, I’m not going to try to force you. You have nothing to apologize for,” Aziraphale reassured him, after which his friend slumped a little in relief.
Aziraphale had realized his mistake in an instant; at the moment, being in the mindset of himself before he Fell after the worst of what had just happened was the easiest and felt the safest, since the last time he was his present self he had been thinking about his Fall. Of course he didn’t want to do that.
Finding safety and comfort in the present world while he was like this might help him feel safe enough to come back to the present though...
But he could develop a better idea of how to do that, his friend cut in. “Also... This sounds weird but.. can you not call me that right now? It feels wrong. I’m sorry..”
“What?” was he calling him anything out of the ordinary? Oh. Right, he hadn’t always been called Crowley. In fact, he hadn’t been called Crowley for a good few hundred years at least even after he was assigned to Earth. “Oh, yes, of course! I know you must feel very disoriented right now and I don’t want to increase that. Do you want me to call you something else?”
The other frowned. “Um.. no. I don’t think my name in Heaven fits anymore either now. It feels wrong. Could you just not use a name for me?”
“Yes, of course.”
After a while, Aziraphale had an idea. He couldn’t exactly help his friend using his normal coping skills, like driving very fast, or bantering with Aziraphale to give himself something easy and rehearsed to stick to the rhythm of. None of those would be doable or really feel like they fit. But, he had made stars and nebulae while in Heaven, right?
“My dear, how would you feel about looking at things in space? The humans didn’t really have a good idea of what things looked like up close for a long time, but recently they’ve gotten a lot better at it. What do you think?”
The other’s eyes lit up as he gasped in intrigue, and for the first time in a while, he smiled. “Can we?? I always wondered what the humans would think. I don’t think I actually got to reading what they thought, just looking at the pictures they have.”
Aziraphale smiled. There, that was something he could both enjoy no matter what time in his life felt the most recent. The angel summoned the remote from the other side of the room, and after a bit of clicking, found a documentary about space and nebulae specifically. They ended up repositioning so Aziraphale was sitting with his back against a chair with his legs out, and the other with the blanket around his shoulders, nestled on the floor and leaning against Aziraphale’s front. He had actually pulled Aziraphale’s arms around him as they were getting situated, and once they were settled Aziraphale was holding him in a loose hug with his hands clasped near the other’s sternum.
They watched the whole thing together, and as the rich voice of the narrator continued on and on, Aziraphale’s friend seemed to grow more relaxed and more enjoying of the present.
When a new, similar documentary started, Aziraphale noticed that his friend was looking a bit sleepy, and after about twenty minutes, he had caught him waking himself up from a light doze.
“Are you tired?” he asked. His friend nodded, and yawned.
“Do you want to go upstairs so you can sleep in a proper bed?” He shook his head, before mumbling a tired, “Mm-mm, no. Wanna stay down here. ‘M too tired.”
Aziraphale quickly miracled up some cushioned blankets underneath them so they wouldn’t just be sitting (or as the case may be, slouching) on hard floor, as well as another blanket on top of them. “Alright, we can sleep here, though I’ll have you know this isn’t going to be a pattern,” he said faux-seriously.
His friend smiled with the joke.
“Goodnight my dear, and dream of whatever you like best,” he said, and pressed a small kiss to the top of his friend’s head along with the small blessing.
“G’nkght...” his friend muttered, and dozed off.
————
The next morning, they both lazily came back to consciousness. Aziraphale had woken first by a bit, and for a while had just watched his friend peacefully sleep for the first time in a long time.
The last night had been interesting, to say the least. He didn’t doubt the validity of what happened; after all, he had looked at his friend’s true form for a bit, and you couldn’t consciously change that. There was also no doubt that Falling had been traumatic. However, he did want to learn more just in case it happened again, so while the sun rose Aziraphale did some research.
About a half hour later, the being in his lap shifted and yawned deeply as he woke up, blinking and rubbing his eyes.
“Good morning, dear,” Aziraphale said. The other grunted an approximation of a return greeting. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Sleepy, but better,” he replied.
“...And as far as feeling more present?” Aziraphale asked. The other sounded much closer to his usual self, but he wanted to make sure before much happened so he didn’t over or under-compensate for that.
He lifted his head with a confused expression, before realizing what he was talking about. “Oh! Uhh.. yeah, mostly. Still a bit.. wobbly, but I’m mostly back to my regular self.”
“That’s good, I’m glad!” the angel responded. “...Um, can I tell you what I think happened?”
Crowley nodded with a clenched jaw. Admittedly, he was pretty embarrassed by the fact that Aziraphale had seen any of that. However, knowing that he still would accept him as he was —even during something like that— and not treat him much differently after was a little bolstering.
“I think,” Aziraphale started, “that you had an emotional flashback, and a fairly intense one. That’s when you have a flashback but it’s not a full one; it mainly focuses on the emotions of a time. I also think that since the uhh.. event, shall we say, was drawn out for a longer period of time and wasn’t just centered around one moment, other parts of everyday life got caught up in it as well. So after the worst was over, it still felt like you were how you were in Heaven. Does that line up at all?”
Crowley nodded. “Yeah, mostly. I also didn’t want to be.. well, me right now, because I couldn’t handle that at the time.. and I guess I thought staying like that was safer.”
“Ah, that makes sense,” Aziraphale acknowledged.
Crowley shifted so he was now mostly laying on Aziraphale’s front, with his head resting on the other’s chest, and took the other’s soft hand, stroking his knuckles. “I wanted to say thank you. For taking care of me when I needed it. I didn’t get anything like that in Heaven. Even when things were better. So thank you for that, because I think it was the first time.. in a very, very long time.. that that part of me felt truly loved.”
Instead of responding immediately, Aziraphale pulled the other into a tight hug. Crowley froze for a split second, but then relaxed and returned it. The angel pressed a kiss to his hair. “You are always welcome, my dearest.”