Chapter Text
Sure as was promised, the bus driver takes a detour to London. Crowley and Aziraphale are the only passengers remaining by the time the bus slows to a soft stop outside of Crowley’s Mayfair flat. Aziraphale stands first but hangs behind, letting Crowley move in front of him to exit the bus first, an unmistakable expression of lead the way if Crowley has ever seen one before.
It makes Crowley’s chest hurt a little bit and he thinks, maybe, that he’s finally started to lose his marbles. He passes the bus driver and is out the door without so much as a backwards glance to the poor soul who is definitely going to be very perplexed in about ten good minutes and is probably going to have a lot of explaining to do to their superiors about why a massive detour to Mayfair was strictly necessary in the middle of the night. They might even be fired in the morning. At this point, Crowley really doesn’t care.
He grinds his heels to a stop on the pavement as he waits for Aziraphale to finish bidding the driver a good night, with too many ‘thank-you’s and ‘drive back safely, my dear’s crammed in there, as is normal for Aziraphale. Crowley would find it annoying if he didn’t find it so damn endearing. And if he hadn’t thought, only a few hours prior, that he would never get the chance to even be annoyed by Aziraphale again. He swallows, pressing a hard hand to his chest. Blinks firmly. Aziraphale steps up behind him.
“Quite a gorgeous building,” he says, and once again waits for Crowley to lead the way.
“Mm,” Crowley grunts. “Yeah. S’nice.” His legs feel a little bit like jelly. He times his breaths with his steps forward, Aziraphale trailing behind him.
Blind faith, Crowley’s brain supplies as he fumbles with his keys. Ever so helpful. He’ll follow you anywhere. He trusts you to keep him safe. Don’t fuck it up.
“Got the door, dear?” Aziraphale asks after a moment, trying to peek over Crowley’s shoulder and get a good look at what’s taking quite so long.
“I’m trying,” Crowley replies to both his brain and Aziraphale. The door gives way.
The moment they are both inside and the door has been shut and locked behind them, the mental toll of all the events of the past week or so sort of pummel Crowley into a helpless lump of demon all at once. He doesn’t know how he ends up sitting on the floor, he only knows that Aziraphale is down there with him, and that’s all he actually really cares about.
“Crowley? Crow- Crowley?” Aziraphale stutters. He places warm hands on Crowley’s cheeks, attempting to straighten his gaze. “What’s wrong? Can you see me?”
Aziraphale gently removes his sunglasses. Crowley can’t help but to feel a bit…embarrassed. But he’s Crowley, and Aziraphale is in front of him, so he kind of can’t bear to look anywhere else.
“There you are, my dear. Goodness, you sure know how to give me a fright. Are you feeling quite alright?” He places the back of his hand against Crowley’s forehead like he’s a human child, and has the gall to tut disapprovingly.
“Warmer than usual. I believe you have performed entirely too many high-level miracles today. You’ve overexerted yourself.”
Part of Crowley wants to snap and say that, yeah, it was the surplus of miracles that have caused him to finally flip his lid, but that it was also the fact he thought that Aziraphale had been good and well murdered, too. But he doesn’t snap. He kind of just… stares at Aziraphale while he tries to make his lower lip stop trembling. It doesn’t.
Aziraphale notices, because of course he notices, and gives Crowley a little answering pout of his own. “Now, there’s no need for that,” Aziraphale says, as kind and as gentle as ever, and he stands, extending his hands to Crowley after tucking an arm of his shades into the top of his vest. It doesn’t match Aziraphale’s outfit at all and yet it looks perfectly in place on him. Crowley wonders what they might look like on him properly. Thinks he might like it.
Crowley accepts his hands, letting Aziraphale pull him upward. “It’ll do you no good to stay on the floor,” Aziraphale says, a soft hand on his back guiding Crowley into the recesses of the flat that he had never actually set foot in before. “Your place is beautiful, but a little too… stoney… to sit on without furniture. And it's a little cold. I’m surprised you haven’t caught a chill yet throughout the years.”
He pauses. Whispers, “Oh, my poor bookshop. Always the right temperature. It was so lovely.”
Crowley feels his eyes water at the thought of Aziraphale’s home, now nothing more than a pile of brick and debris. He’s grateful that Aziraphale is behind him and can’t see. He opens his mouth to say something; an apology, he thinks, for what he’s not quite sure, but doesn’t get the chance to before the hand Aziraphale has had gently nudging him along has suddenly gripped the back of his blazer with a fierce urgency.
“Stop,” Aziraphale commands, and Crowley bristles with panic. Someone in the flat, his brain supplies. Keep him behind you. He focuses harder, tries to sense what Aziraphale might be picking up on.
“What is that smell?” Aziraphale asks, still serious. Crowley turns his nose up.
“Ah,” he says, remembering. “Ligur.”
“Ligur?” Aziraphale balks. “What do you mean, Lig-” He cuts himself off and peeks around Crowley, casting his glance down to the end of the narrow hallway where a door is ajar. A mound of coagulated matter is still sizzling on the floor at the threshold.
Aziraphale releases his grip on Crowley but fixes him with a glare that clearly says something along the lines of, ‘Don’t you fucking move,’ and Crowley, for once in his life, is not going to disobey.
Aziraphale nudges gently past Crowley and makes his way to the offending object at the end of the hall. When he gets there, he turns on a dime, fists shooting straight down to his sides.
“Crowley!”
Crowley shrugs. “They, mmm, you know. Tried to come after me. I had my insurance.”
Aziraphale turns on a dime again, scanning the room for a familiar tartan thermos.
“You-,” He bristles, and suddenly looks a little too pink in the face. “Of all the irresponsible, dangerous things to do-”
“Angel, I was extremely cautious,” Crowley says weakly, taking a step forward.
“Stop!” Aziraphale shouts, sending a little ripple of energy throughout the flat. Crowley stills.
“Don’t come over here.”
Aziraphale makes his way back over to Crowley, and pulls him by the hand into the next room over. Crowley feels quite bad, all of a sudden, for making Aziraphale worry. It’s always the last thing that he wants to do.
“M’sorry,” he manages around the tightness in his chest and tears in his eyes.
Aziraphale sighs and places another soft touch to Crowley’s forehead. Crowley once again finds it very hard to tear his eyes away from him, but that has been the case for about 6,000 years now, so he figures Aziraphale must be quite used to it at this point.
“It’s alright,” Aziraphale says, so, so softly. He squeezes Crowley’s shoulder. “I’m just relieved you’re still with me, is all.”
“Mmph,” Crowley whimpers, because yeah, he gets it. He feels his lower lip start up with its infernal wobbling again, and he knows that there’s nothing to be done.
Aziraphale lets go of his shoulder, nudging him off into his bedroom gently.
“I will clean up the mess, my dear. I just want you to get some rest. Alright?”
Crowley nods.
“Oh, and please not too long. A human sleep. I fear we both need to be prepared for whatever may happen in the morning.”
As much as Crowley hates to admit it, he knows this is true. He feels like he could sleep for multiple centuries this go around. He slinks into his bedroom and shuts the door with a soft click.
Aziraphale cleans up the remnants of Ligur and holy water. Or, rather, very efficiently deletes the entire mess from the whole of existence.
Crowley, while quite thoroughly exhausted from the events of the day, finds it very difficult to actually manage to get any rest. He wakes countless times to the memory of Aziraphale’s bookshop engulfed in flames, and the feeling in his chest will not go away, no matter how many frivolous miracles he tries to perform on himself. In fact, it only makes it worse. He thinks he can still smell the burning wood and paper.
He tries not to attract Aziraphale’s attention. He knows he’s awake in the next room over.
He tries not to go out there and make sure that he’s in the next room over. It’s quite infuriatingly difficult not to.
When he wakes in the morning, or more accurately when he stands up from where he was lying down with his eyes open, he finds his flat spotless. Even more spotless than it usually is.
“I tidied it all up a bit,” Aziraphale calls from the kitchen. Crowley is quite impressed. “Watered your plants as well. They are simply the most gorgeous things,” Aziraphale says, carrying a tray out of the kitchen and setting it on the large hunk of stone Crowley calls a coffee table.
“Wouldn’t want them to start to wilt.”
Crowley has the sneaking suspicion that Aziraphale is talking about more than just the plants.
“I know you’re not much of an eater,” Aziraphale blushes gesturing to his tray, “but I made some breakfast.”
It’s quite a spread. Muffins, fruit, a variety of juices, tea, coffee, toast, jams… “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” Aziraphale says, offering Crowley an out. “I just thought that it might make you feel bett-”
Crowley grabs a muffin and a glass of orange juice before Aziraphale can finish his sentence.
“Thank you, angel,” he says around a big bite. Aziraphale beams. “You are quite welcome, my dear."
He unhooks Crowley's sunglasses from where they have been dangling over his vest throughout the night. Crowley slips them on, more grateful than usual for their ability to hide the breathtaking depth of his adoration and gratitude.
"Now," Aziraphale says, clasping his hands together. "Are we ready to discuss Anges’s last prophecy?”