Work Text:
It was hard for Crowley to be injured, it was a good thing as a demon who had to be around a lot of war. That didn’t mean there weren’t a few ways to injure him though.
Holy Water was an obvious one, he’d seen when that could do to someone and even if he was pretty safe from it here on earth with the only common angel who was down here being Aziraphale. An angel who for all his complaining he had a pact with working together to get things done. Holy Water was a fear but not a very relevant one compared to everything else.
Blessed Objects however were a constant concern and while the most they could do was injure him or discorperate him faster than other weapons they still hurt like shit. Painful buggers them. One that he very much had to worry about now that he had been stabbed and the stab wound was taking painfully long to heal.
He could of course ask Aziraphale to help with that but he really didn’t want to show that weakness. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Aziraphale, he trusted him the most out of everyone he knew and wasn’t that sad that his only closest companion was an angel? But still that was compared to everyone else and considering the options were demons who thought he was useless, an old friend who thought he was useless and an angelic brother who didn’t even know he was alive but also wanted the demon dead, he didn’t have many great options. He did trust Aziraphale, just not nearly enough to be vulnerable with something like this.
He’d been dealing with it fine on his own anyways, it hurt like hell but that was all it did. Even if he was about a week in and it was still pretty prominent. Sleeping did help though and it mostly kept the pain to the back of his mind.
Unfortunately that was something he couldn’t use now because he had to go and talk to his- the angel about the recent things they had gotten done.
Usually on days like this he would be looking forward to things but waking up with a dull pain in his side with a jolt of fear about why he was in pain the effect was pretty dulled. He was usually groggy when he woke up but this was less groggy and more wildly out of place. It was like his mind was trying to escape his body and he did not appreciate it. He didn’t appreciate how things didn’t feel like they were real and he also didn’t appreciate how everything felt distant including how he actually felt about the fact.
Despite this he went through the motions of conjuring a presentable look and heading outside
Everything feeling distant wasn’t nice, nor was trying to shake off being tired when he didn’t have much of a capacity to do it but he managed enough and when he got to the place he was supposed to meet Aziraphale. Fortunately or not fortunately depending on how you looked at it getting there first.
Everything seemed so quiet, though that probably had to do with everything feeling so dulled. The pain was thankfully distant but so was everything else. It was like he didn’t have a corporation to see or hear things and just a soul waiting for Azreal to pick him up. His brain was perfectly there however and that was somehow worse.
He couldn’t help but think this wouldn’t happen if he hadn’t fallen. Angels didn’t have to worry about blessed items, only cursed ones which were rarer. They also weren’t attacked nearly as often because people didn’t assume you were one. They also didn’t have cursed snake eyes and wings tinged black. He hated that, he hated that he had fallen, he hated himself for all of it. He hated that because he asked those stupid questions he lost Aziraphale, he hated that his angel didn’t remember him, he hated that none of his friends did except Beelzebub who got meaner and hated him now.
Then there were his brothers and sisters, at least the ones that didn’t get him in this mess in the first place. They remembered him, Raph at least, the little brother they used to say they loved. What a joke. It was all a big cosmic fucking joke where he lost and everyone else got to think he just fucking died, because of course he got to be remembered in his angel form but only by the ones who he wished didn’t remember because they were all the biggest dicks now.
“-owley!” Oh. Aziraphale was here
“Crowley, are you alright!? You’re bleeding!” Oh, he was, wasn’t he? That was funny, he hadn’t even noticed. He was supposed to be hiding that, right?
As if the world shifted two feet back to the right and someone hit his head like an old- something that needed to be hit to work, everything zoomed back into focus and he realized what was happening. Somehow as his thoughts spirailed and got way off the track of where they were supposed to be, he had fallen to the floor and gotten his wound reopened causing it to bleed. And Aziraphale had seen everything.
Instead of trying to explain what had happened he just subconsciously miracled himself away like someone who didn’t care about making things less obviously wrong.
He couldn’t think about that though because he’d been so far away from everything that he’d shown weakness. He shouldn’t be so upset about it but he couldn’t help the stab of fear in his heart anyway. Sure Aziraphale probably wouldn’t do anything but it had been beaten into him that he could not trust anyone as a demon. Not even angels you used to love.
So he just sat there. Drifting, drifting, drifting, like he had before. He was scared but that had been preferable to the pain he was currently feeling. Maybe he would just sleep for another thousand years. Except he couldn’t pass out and that was infinitely worse.
