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Let this moment stretch an eternity. Let the sun descend and rise no more.
“Not today,” he whispers, a subtle breath wetted with tears as earthbound eyes cast skyward, toward the faces of unseen angels leering down on such a wretched thing as he. Watching. Waiting.
“Please… not today.”
***
Crowley stares at the figure hunched before him, cataract-eyed and pallid in the fogged-up mirror. Mist leaves ghostly impressions on the glass, distorting his angles until it appears as though he is trapped in a dimension of clouds. Hazy and spectral.
The illusion is broken as a hand reaches out to wipe it away.
He sees himself then, skin dripping with water from the shower, damp, merlot hair clinging to his forehead in locks that have grown wild in recent years, akin to the fronds of untrimmed ivy ensnaring their cottage home.
He and Aziraphale had made the decision to pack up and move south not long after the end of the world, at least, what should have been the end, but had, in fact, become the very first day of the rest of their lives. They had needed the change of pace; London had seemed uncharacteristically stifling in the weeks that followed. Too many eyes and ears to play on paranoid minds. And while Heaven and Hell had agreed to stay out of their affairs for the time being, the question remained: For how long?
How much time could they buy before the inevitable drop of the celestial penny? Before the monotony of immortal lives unflavoured by their long-awaited war hungered for bloodshed?
Crowley squeezes his eyes shut, stealing the thoughts away. Little tendrils of light gather at the edges of his vision from the pressure, but he cannot let them escape.
“Not today.” He whispers, forcing a smile to the soft curve of his lips as he prowls toward the bedroom, to a set of clothes waiting folded atop the mattress. “Please… not today.”
It had become a prayer to him, chanted in the waning hours of sleepless nights, in moments when the fear would grow enough to rattle the cages of all soundless beasts, leaving him quaking with sobs stifled desperately in the throat.
He wondered if She ever listened. If, somewhere beyond the star-studded abyss, She could hear a demon’s cry?
Was it blasphemy to ask such a thing? To raise his infernal voice to the Divine, pleading for just one more day!
Crowley reaches the bed, tracing featherlight touches along the seams of the jacket laid there. It is a flawless white, like a glimpse of Spring snow. He picks it up and drags it across his shoulders, lets the stiff fabric encapsulate and meld to the shape of him. It fits like a glove, the material having memorised the jaded angles of its master, the knife-edge cut of bone and skin.
The last time Crowley had worn it, he had posed as a waiter at little Warlock’s eleventh birthday. Hands folded, thumb pressed against the face of his watch. The tiny, fluttering dials had pulsed through his fingertips. Tick. Tick. Tick…
He had counted down the seconds, each one another gallop of a hound that never came. Each one another moment to etch Aziraphale’s face into his mind. The bow-curve frown of his lips, the haunting, glacial blue of his eyes. Even his ridiculous, scribbled-on moustache!
He had not wanted to forget him should the worst have come to pass.
If the antichrist had brought about the final war, Crowley would have gladly bowed before the angel’s blade. Better to go peaceably by the hands of someone he trusted than raise his own against him. Willing as a lamb. Softer than falling asleep.
And maybe, Crowley had supposed, he could take the memories with him. Perhaps they would scatter with his atoms and create flowers in a garden Aziraphale could tend to long after he was gone. Recollections sown in the pollen and leaves, falling as petals of a cherry blossom tree.
Aziraphale could have laid him to rest in his white suit, an ode to the colours he had worn as an angel. Let him sleep beside the bookshop, beneath the London sky. Anywhere would have been home, even amongst the soil and worms, if he could still be close to his angel.
Crowley sniffs, scrubbing the tears that have gathered and leaving wet trails along his pale sleeves. He wants to gift it better memories, this white, funeral coat. To dance, and smile, and laugh within its shades with the art of forgetting.
He plans to start tonight.
***
Beneath the waning twilight sky, Crowley walks along the shoreline, the patter of his footfalls dulled by the pale sands. The waves lap at his ankles, seafoam tickling the skin with the gentlest of caresses, even as the jaded edges of shells tear at his soles.
He is a stain against the pristine chalk of the cliffs, a tangle of jagged angles and matchstick hair. He can see Aziraphale knelt on the dock, fingers dangled in the current and tracing circles amongst a shoal of shimmering fish. They dart about the manicured fingers in little figure-of-eight configurations, beckoned by the anglerfish lure of his presence.
Crowley knows the feeling. He has courted the moon enough times to understand the temptation, the company to be had in the simple proximity of Aziraphale. Always close, never touching. A moth enamoured by the lunar light.
Do you remember, my angel? How my hands trembled when they reached out to find yours? How my fingers fumbled and slipped, because I was so afraid the brimstone corruption of my touch would shatter you?
Crowley closes the distance between them with long, insistent strides. He needs the familiarity. The soft pull of old souls entwined.
Do you remember how you took them, and held me with such certainty, I was the one who fell apart in your arms? And I wept in the stark white of your hair, face buried in the crook of your neck, as tears fell enough rival the rains of the Flood.
His feet find the wooden slats of the pier, sending a staccato chorus to rattle the old planks. Aziraphale senses him then, his plump, cherubim face turning to greet the demon with the sincerest of smiles.
All because you loved me. All because I was scared to let go. That in the simple act of touching you, I would push you over the edge of all things. That I would be the one to make you Fall…
Aziraphale reaches out to him, hand still dripping from the salty brine. He smells like the ocean. Crisp and sweet and familiar. Crowley has never been a creature of the seas, even as a snake, and yet, now, it impossibly feels like home.
How could I have been so blind to see that you had already chosen? That you had taken the leap centuries ago. That you had chosen me, as I had chosen you. Opposing tides bound by the gentleness of gravity.
And then… they meet. Clashing on the edge of the dock in a cataclysm of tangled limbs and thrumming wings. Their clothes press together, the pale shades melding into one, until there is no distinction between the borders of them.
“My dear! You haven’t worn this in years! What’s the occasion?” Aziraphale flusters, further melting into the embrace.
Crowley hums, a wry, wolfish grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Have I ever needed an excuse to dress fancy for my husband?”
This spurs a puff of laughter from the angel, and the demon is certain it is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard in all his millennia bound to the Earth.
Aziraphale pulls away just enough to catch Crowley’s gaze, the chuckle faltering at the sight of his wet, golden eyes.
He has always been able to see through him. Crowley is a glass statue, his vulnerability a jagged splinter. Aziraphale knows this, but he also understands the nature of serpents. The need not to be strong, but to feel strong. To ignore the crack in the transparent body. This silly game of pretend.
And so, Aziraphale simply smiles, pressing their foreheads together with the softest of touches. He holds Crowley like a lover, revelling in the solace of intimacy that had been denied for so long. Porcelain to an obsidian. The greyscale presence of the infernal and the holy interwoven.
“Not today?” Crowley murmurs, his body shuddering as Aziraphale’s mouth reaches up and moulds to his.
“Not today…” Aziraphale echoes, falling all the more.
***