Chapter Text
Crowley stares at his phone in disbelief.
This is an Emergency Alert from Eden County. The Health Officer of Eden County has put in place a shelter-in-place order, effective tonight at midnight, March 17, 2020 to prevent the spread of Corona virus.
For more information on the details of this public health order, please click on this link. Within the press release there is a link for the list of “essential activities.”
He clicks through, and it turns out he’s not even allowed to leave his apartment unless it’s basically an emergency. And there’s no end date on the order.
He’s seen the news out of Wuhan, of course, and then Italy, and Iran. But it just seemed like, y’know, this is a developed country, and what’s more the government had plenty of time to see it coming. There were obviously things they could have done. But, apparently they didn’t, and now the virus is here, and they’re fucked. Crowley feels… well, angry about it. Fuckin scared too, but mostly angry, right now.
He wants to call Aziraphale. Wait, no, he should call the club? Ah fuck, actually, he knows who he needs to talk to first.
He jams his sunglasses on his face and opens the door to his room. Dagon is already sitting in the common area — a rare occurrence. He’s honestly a bit surprised he even remembers her name.
“Hey,” Crowley says awkwardly. “Should we maybe talk about—” He gestures with his phone.
“Yeah, probably,” Dagon says, sounding just as awkward. “Yeah. Is Michael home, do you know?”
Michael’s bedroom door slams open.
“I haven’t left the house in two weeks,” she informs them snootily. “I’m doing my part to flatten the curve.”
“Cool,” says Crowley. “Good for you. Some of us have jobs.”
“Not right now you don’t,” Michael points out. Crowley’s stomach lurches at that. Shit. The club had already talked about closing temporarily, just to be responsible, but he hadn’t thought much of it. Hopefully this’ll all blow over soon; he’s not sure how long he can keep paying rent just on his savings.
“They’re saying it’ll be at least two weeks, maybe even as long as two months,” Michael continues. “Of course we’re all young and healthy, so we probably wouldn’t die if we caught it, but I’d still rather not.”
Fuck Michael and her assumptions. Crowley may be young, but there are other factors that mean he has reason to be afraid of getting sick. Not that he would ever tell Michael that in a million fucking years.
“Right, so, we don’t leave the apartment?” Dagon asks.
The two women hash out details of everything from grocery acquisition to what they’ll do if one of them contracts the disease, and Crowley gives his opinion when asked, but mostly he just stares at the ground, feeling numb.
* * *
The first few days aren’t so bad. Crowley pretends he’s on a vacation and just lazes around his room watching things on the internet.
By the third day being lazy has lost a lot of its appeal; he’s full of restless energy and wants to go for a run. But Michael doesn’t think it’s safe to do things like going running, so instead he works off his energy by doing 200 situps and 200 pushups. It does tire him out, but it’s not the same. He still feels like he wants to run.
On the fourth day he gets around to cleaning his room and answering some emails. He pays his credit card bills. He learns the handwashing dance. He tries an app that’s supposed to train him out of touching his face and gives up on it after two minutes.
On the fifth day it’s finally a weekend and he can call Aziraphale. He misses him so much, and he feels deep pangs of regret for not driving down the week before. He thought he’d have time. But when he does call, there’s none of their usual banter or hours-long free-wheeling discussion about anything and everything; Aziraphale seems distracted and overwhelmed, and begs off after only forty minutes. Crowley ends the call feeling more lonely than he did at the beginning.
On the sixth day he finally caves and lets Michael force him into morning yoga. It turns out to be the exact opposite of relaxing when Michael spends the whole session criticizing his form, and then starts talking about how it would be nice if he used his talent for dance to do something less unsavory. Crowley locks himself in his room for the rest of the day and spends a very long time imagining smashing every single item that Michael owns to bits with a baseball bat.
By day ten it has become very clear that this is not a two-week deal, and whatever official said that was just pulling numbers out of their ass. He probably has to face another six weeks of being stuck in this house. He spends the day figuring out how long he can survive on his savings. He’s relieved to find that if he cuts out all but the bare minimum expenses and eats nothing but the bulk beans and rice Michael has filled the apartment with, he can make it about nine months. (So, realistically more like six months, since there’s no way he’s actually going to eat absolutely nothing but beans and rice for like a year.)
On day eleven, he spends most of the day doom scrolling, and has a panic attack. On day twelve he paces around his room like a caged animal, trying not to be reminded of the years he’s already spent locked inside against his will. He fails and has a panic attack. Michael doesn’t think it’s safe for them to have their windows open since there are people walking by outside, so it’s hard to get enough oxygen, and he starts hyperventilating and has a panic attack.
The days start to blur together. He’s just waiting for this to be over. Dagon and Michael have a fight about whether Dagon is allowed to see her partner. Michael keeps trying to goad him into joining her for yoga again. He’s eaten beans and rice twice a day for more than a week now and he feels a bit sick from it. There’s no real reason to get dressed, and it’s just as well, since doing laundry would mean he had to leave his room.
Someone in their building tests positive and Michael covers all of the vents in the apartment with HEPA filters that she apparently just has for some reason. Much as he can’t stand her, Crowley is secretly grateful that she’s so on top of all this stuff. He doesn’t know what might happen if he got sick, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to find out. But he certainly doesn’t have the spoons to do… whatever the hell it is Michael’s been doing. You can appreciate someone’s actions and still want to strangle them, right?
Three weeks in, he turns 27, but the only acknowledgement he gets is a text from Aziraphale (even though it’s a Saturday, and they should have had a phone call today). He remembers that Aziraphale has been observing his birthday as the anniversary of his disappearance for the past eight years, and he remembers they’d talked about spending his birthday together as a way of making new memories. He cries bitterly for what might be hours, muffling his sobs in his pillow.
* * *
A few days later, Crowley realizes he’s running low on meds, and he just… doesn’t know what to do. The pharmacy offers delivery, but he can’t run the risk of the prescription getting lost in the mail, because he can’t afford the out-of-pocket replacement cost.
He finally works up the spoons to bring it up to Michael, every muscle in his body clenched with anxiety. Michael holds up a finger, ducks into her room, and returns a moment later with what looks like a gas mask, only instead of cool steampunk-looking knobby things, it has two hot pink discs protruding from it.
“Um,” says Crowley.
Michael rolls her eyes.
“It’s a P100,” she says. “It protects you from 99.9% of airborne particles, including viruses.”
So Crowley straps the thing to his face — the mask plus his sunglasses make him look like some kind of malevolent insect — and ventures outside for the first time in more than three weeks. The sunlight on his skin is a shock.
It’s a ten-minute walk to the pharmacy, and it’s the most stressful walk Crowley has ever taken. Even though the streets are emptier than usual — eerily empty, really — there are still people. Everywhere.
When he gets to the pharmacy, it occurs to him that this is the first time he’s been in a store in a long time, and maybe he should take the opportunity to pick up something besides his meds. He shuts down that line of thought almost immediately. Just being here at all is such a herculean feat; he can’t handle the prospect of adding anything onto it.
He makes it through the interaction with the pharmacist, somehow, near-shouting to be heard through his mask. He makes it back to the apartment. Somehow.
The moment he walks in the door, Michael makes him change into new nitrile gloves, throw all his clothes in the laundry, and take a shower. The pill bottle, she makes him wipe down with Lysol wipes and then leave untouched for 48 hours. What a fucking ordeal. At least he has another month’s worth of meds. (And jesus fuck, is he going to have to do this again in a month?)
Crowley spends the rest of the day sitting in his room, because that’s all he ever does. He watches the people pass on the street below and hates them. He hates the old men with their masks around their chins, the frat bros breaking the law to go hang out with their friends behind closed doors, even the children running around. He hates them for being free when he is not, hates them for every day their carelessness keeps him here, imprisoned. Hates them because they have something he doesn’t. He’s not a kind person; he’s not really sure if he’s capable of positive emotions anymore — or was he ever? Just a fucked up tangle of anxiety, hatred, fear, and self-loathing, that’s him.
The sky outside his window grows dark as the sun sets on another day. No one’s singing on their balconies here.