Chapter Text
Crowley wanted to be angry. He wanted to rage, wanted to explode in a burst of lightening. He wanted to become lightning itself, shoot through the air and then cease to be anything at all. He wanted to be mad.
But he wasn’t. Okay, he was, of course, at a surface level. But the feeling he found himself drowning in at current was despair.
The cruelest despair. Like falling, yet somehow worse.
A wave of rage took him by the spine and swelled through his extremities. He screwed up his face against it and let his head hit the steering wheel of his Bentley. Why did he kiss him that way, at that time? What expression had Crowley hoped to see on the face of his angel Aziraphale when he pulled apart? And of all possible expressions Aziraphale could’ve shown him, why did he have to find a whimpering, angry one staring back?
It almost didn’t matter. Whatever expression he’d hoped for, in that last-ditch, Hail Mary (or whoever) effort, it wouldn’t have changed what the angel decided to become. What the angel had offered Crowley back. What the angel had rejected.
This rung a cold and hollow note from the space where his heart used to operate. Did Aziraphale know him at all?
His only friend- his- his- near soul mate- didn’t know, after all this time, after everything they’d been through, that Crowley would never want to rejoin the ranks of any supernatural government, for good or evil. Crowley thought they understood each other. Crowley thought ONLY they understood the other. That only they could.
Hellfire would be preferable to this feeling. He pulled the Bentley over and slumped. Whatever he’d been once, he was now misery. Only misery.
It had been a half hour since he’d kissed Aziraphale. It was just under a half hour since he’d watched the angel ascend to heaven with the Metatron. He was probably up there, shaking hands, smiling widely, making lengthy speeches. Maybe even speaking directly to The Almighty herself. Clever angel, orchestrating some new age of angeldom where everyone eats cakes and drinks tea and joins his celestial book club. He could’ve smiled if the thought didn’t make Crowley’s stomach roil.
So Aziraphale thought he could fix something. “Well, good luck with that, Angel, you complete idiot,” he spat. The Bentley sputtered in protest, maybe, and Crowley seriously considered blowing it up.
Rain was falling now. The smell of it on the pavement was overwhelming. The day itself was overwhelming. He had been so looking forward to some time, just he and Aziraphale, when everything was over. Breakfast, alcohol, peace and quiet and his angel’s company. At that, Crowley couldn’t stop himself. After what had been a dry streak of thousands of years, he found his eyes filling for the second time that day. This time, tears fell.
He had to hand it to her; God was truly fantastic. Fantastic at what she did. You think your punishment as a fallen angel is as straightforward as being plopped into the flaming lakes of Hell and emerging a demon, when in FACT, your punishment is far, far worse. God lets you fall deeply and inexorably in love with an entirely opposite creature, allows you to believe beyond doubt that the feeling is mutual, only to smite you so cruelly, so creatively, so devastatingly, you can hardly believe She doesn’t run Hell herself. Perhaps, he realized, She does.
“Bravo, God; you listening up there? You did it! If you’d like to see exactly what breaks me, you’ve done it! Bravo!” The tears streamed down his cheeks. They caught on the lower lip of his glasses. He ripped them off. They crumbled in the backseat.
He continued bitterly. “Enjoy him up there! He’s the best you’ve ever made and you probably don’t even know it. If you did, Gabriel and the lot would never have been in charge. And you know EVERYTHING, allegedly! HAH. I’ll bet you STILL don’t know what you’ve got. What you’ve taken. Cheers to you for winning as you always do. Fine display of sociopathy, per usual.”
The rain was steady. The clouds didn’t darken or lighten or move. Nothing felt different. She was as speechless as always.
“You listening up there, you great brute? This funny to you?”
Nothing replied. Crowley felt more alone than he ever had. Without any thought, he turned the car on. It drove on its own while Crowley held his face in his hands.
After a few moments, the car decided to make its own plaintive little comment. beep beep.
“Shut up,” Crowley whimpered in a voice he barely recognized. He registered that the car rolled the window down, but then-
beep beep.
“I said SHUT UP!” Crowley bellowed, his fragile constitution cracking.
“Excuse me? You honked at ME! TWICE!” A voice responded, very peeved.
Nina. Who would be very smart to turn and run from Crowley right now.
“I didn’t honk at you. The car did.” He didn’t look at her. But then, his body betraying him, he did.
“Oh, dear,” Nina’s voice was full of concern Crowley couldn’t handle. His face scrunched in irritation and general pain.
“Listen, come into the coffee shop. I’m closing early.” Only then did Crowley realize he was parked just outside of the bookshop that was no longer Aziraphale’s.
He swallowed. “What for?”
“For you, of course. You’re going through a breakup. I’m going through a breakup.”
“Darling, what I’m experiencing is nothing like what you are. I’ve known the ang- Aziraphale since the dawn of time. I’ve- we’ve- this has been a thing for six thousand years.”
“Six thousand years and you’ve never even kissed,” She replied cooly. “Six thousand years and still less experienced than me.”
Crowley’s face fell against the wheel. He rolled up the window. He hollered.
Nina opened the car door to coax the demon out. He followed mechanically.
“So you did. And I take it it didn’t go well?”
“Like a Bethel teenager after a bear sighting,” Crowley hiccuped.
“I don’t know what that means,” Nina replied, leading him down the street towards her shop. He did his best to look away from Aziraphale’s place. “I never understand you or- well, him.”
They were in the coffee shop now. There were a few folks inside, but not for long. “Dreadfully sorry, folks, but I’ll need to close the shop early. If I could ask you all to please finish up- this is an emergency, you see.” She said the words with an attempt at politeness, but they came out very curt. The patrons moved to the door obediently if not grumbly.
As the last customer passed through the door, she closed the door behind him and locked. Flipping the open sign to closed, she sighed and let her forehead rest against the door glass.
“I suppose I owe you an apology.”
Crowley sat at a table near the counter. “What?”
“For the bad advice.” She turned from the door and walked around the counter, pulling out a mid-value wine and uncorking it. “In my defense, it seemed like you were both very-“
“Very nothing,” he snapped, glaring heatedly at the wine glass that appeared before him. It had been very long since he’d drank with anyone other than Aziraphale. He felt almost unfaithful for drinking with Nina now, which was a stupid thought he hated himself for having.
“Not very nothing. He loves you, it’s as clear as the sky is blue.”
“With lovers like these, who needs enemies, right?” Crowley scowled, draining the glass.
“So what happened?”
“It’s too awful to justify the excessively long story. Suffice to say, I asked him to be with me and he decided…” She refilled his glass. “…To not be.”
“Cheers to broken hearts,” she replied solemnly, clinking her glass to his.
“The worst of it is,” Crowley sighed, realizing his glasses were gone and wishing desperately they weren’t. “The worst of it is that I am so angry with him, and still all I want to do is talk to him. Change his mind.”
His face darkened and he finished the second glass. “But I also want to shake him by the shoulders, and also never speak to him again, and forget everything I ever felt for him, and also I think die?” The wine was working.
“Been there,” said a voice from the back hall. Maggie walked out, arms laden with bags. “Didn’t mean to eavesdrop, my apologies there. Just helping with a product run.”
“Ah, my other little Cupid.” Crowley flicked his eyes at her. She lingered on them, but didn’t say anything. “Come to orchestrate more crippling moments of my despair?”
“Cheeky, coming from you,” Maggie rolled her eyes. “Trapped anyone else in their shops lately?”
“Planning on it imminently, be careful now” he replied. She smiled, putting away the oat milks she’d picked up.
“Crowley,” Nina said, almost sternly. “As much as it feels otherwise, this isn’t going to kill you.”
“And it might really, really feel that way. For a while.” Maggie added, voice dripping with something like pity, and something else that seemed like fondness. Crowley felt sick.
“I appreciate the concern, darlings, but I can’t see what life looks like on the other side of this. I’m not saying I’ll kill myself. I just don’t see how I can be myself. I’m not sure who I am when I don’t have him.”
The women looked at him, matching expressions of sympathy on their faces. Nina sighed. “Six thousand years is a quite a habit to break.”
Any vestiges of humor or steel left Crowley. His eyes were like broken glass, all sharpness and sparkle and pain. “So how was it so easy for him?”
Maggie and Nina had no good response for this. Not at first, anyway.
They exchanged silent glances as Crowley, head in his arms on the table top, tried and failed to make no sound at all. He didn’t care for crying. He hated Aziraphale for making him feel this. He hated Aziraphale for breaking his heart.
“I don’t think it was, Crowley.”
“What?” Crowley didn’t look up.
“Easy for him,” Maggie finished, her voice with a lilt Crowley found incredibly inappropriate.
“Oh yeah?” he seethed, fire in his voice. “Then why did he leave?”
Just then, a tapping on the coffee shop door. Time seemed to freeze, but Crowley couldn’t have done a miracle like that right now if he tried.
He turned his head slowly. Just on the other side stood Aziraphale. Soaked from the rain and sobbing. Not even attempting to hide it or save face. Crowley stood faster than human bodies could.
“YOU,” he hollered, stalking towards the door with his teeth bared and his shoulders tight. Like a predator. Like a demon.
He flung the door open (the lock flew to pieces across the coffee shop) and stood for a half second, chest heaving. Suddenly, Aziraphale was wrapped around him.
“I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“Cast you out already, have they?” Crowley muttered, extracting himself from the angel’s arms.
“Oh, of course not. They think I’m here to try to persuade you again.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“No,” Aziraphale said, wiping his eyes. “I’m here to discuss this with you. As partners. We make this decision together.”
Crowley scoffed. “Right, because if my answer doesn’t change, you’ll just be content to stay here like this? I wasn’t born yesterday, Angel. Aziraphale.”
Aziraphale winced at the correction. “If your answer doesn’t change then I’ll just have to accept it. But I do hope we can enter this discussion openly.”
“What’s the point in talking? You know what you want!”
“And what do I want?” Aziraphale seemed to steam.
“To be Gabriel 2.0, apparently! Kill some innocents because God told you to, toss some curious angels into hellfire. Who knows?”
Aziraphale spluttered. “If I wanted that, then why would I be here? I never should’ve gone. I should’ve talked to you. And YOU,” he pointed his finger like a certain delusional witch hunter had done a few short years ago. “You shouldn’t have- have- SPRUNG on me in a moment like that. I’ve wanted to kiss you for eons, tenderly, not in the middle of the biggest fight we ever had! Haven’t you even the slightest idea what romance should be?”
Behind them, Nina and Maggie both sucked in air through their teeth. Crowley shot a glare at them. He knew his form had been….poor.
“Of COURSE I haven’t! I’ve been pining after you for six thousand years without so much as a bone tossed.”
“We’re missing the point. The point is, I made a grievous error and I apologize with every part of me. Please just let me talk to you about all this. Let’s decide together what we do next, because whatever we do next, I need us to be together.”
Crowley’s teeth were bared. “Why should I want that?”
“Oh damn it, Crowley! Because I love you! And you love me!”
Crowley willed his body to make no reaction to the words, but some organs disagreed. “Not sure I do, really. Not sure I can.”
“Because I wanted to keep Earth safe from the best possible vantage point? Because I could give up my shop so that trigger-happy angels don’t start another Armageddon? Forgive me, dear boy, but have you ever met me?”
Crowley’s face readjusted a few times. Of course he saw it like this.
Aziraphale huffed, tears falling again as he moved back outside. “Fine. Fine. I wasted your time coming back. Sorry to you, Nina, Maggie, for having to witness this.” Aziraphale’s voice was almost stony. “And to you for misjudging the situation so completely. And for doing everything wrong.” It was dramatic. Bitchy, even. Crowley’s weak point.
“I’m not sure you can help it- top representative of Heaven and all. This is exactly what your lot does.” Crowley’s voice was rather not stony. It was fond.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “Please just talk to me.”
Nina and Maggie made noises behind them, like you might make to a stubborn dog. Crowley didn’t move. He turned back to his wine and drank, looking ahead at the wall and no where near Aziraphale at all.
“Goodbye, then,” Aziraphale whispered. He walked out of the coffee shop and into the road.
“You IDIOT,” hissed Nina, rapping his shoulder blade with her knuckles.
“Go AFTER him!” Maggie shook his other shoulder. “You don’t do it now, you’ll regret it forever.”
Forever meant something very different to mortals than it did to him. But in that second, as he watched the love of his existence walk away, he couldn’t stand to waste any more seconds.
He strode into the rain himself, long legs making up ground quickly.
“FINE, ANGEL! We’ll TALK.”
Aziraphale spun around, face covered in tears and rain, white hair sticking to his head. With a cry of delight, he moved towards Crowley, who stepped back. “I need a better apology.”
It was clear he needed an apology beyond a silly dance. He needed something new.
“Might I try a hug, Crowley?” Aziraphale choked and gasped through his sobs.
Crowley sniffed. “You may.”
The effect was instantaneous. The moment they touched again, which they so seldom had done for centuries, Aziraphale was sobbing and Crowley was gripping him as tightly as he could.
“I’m sorry!” Aziraphale wailed against Crowley’s dark blazer. “I got carried away, I-“
“‘M sorry,” Crowley whispered back, jaggedly, trying to keep himself together. “I shouldn’t have kissed you then. I thought you would have wanted to be kissed. I was stupid.”
“Of course I want you to kiss me! Please, do it again!”
“No way, Angel. If you want to kiss, you’ll do it first. Never want to feel how I did earlier.”
Aziraphale pulled back from Crowley, took his face in both hands, and kissed him properly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he chanted, kissing Crowley again. Kissing across Crowley’s face. Kissing his lips again.
“Stop talking, keep kissing me,” Crowley growled.
The angel obeyed until Nina spoke from somewhere. “Alright lads, off to your bookshop then please. I’ve seen a lot of firsts in the last twenty-four hours and yours doesn’t need to be one of them.”
“At least find an awning, I hear they do wonders for new couples!” Maggie quipped.
Crowley and Aziraphale broke apart. Holding hands, they walked back to the bookshop. They’d have a big talk, probably a fight even. But the important matter was settled; whatever decision they made, they’d make together.