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Crowley was alone.
He had driven the Bentley without destination for -- well, he lost track of time. He never needed to stop for gas, and the day/night cycle had become blurred in the hailstorm of his emotions. He wasn’t entirely alone, he tried to reassure himself, he had his plants, his car, and crushed the angelic little voice in the back of his head reminding him of our.
Funny thing, emotions. He was heartbroken, of course, but when the heart breaks it’s easy for thoughts to turn venomous. If his - if the angel wanted to rule a broken system, fine by him. Exceedingly stupid, selfish decision. Suggesting he become an angel again just confirmed that Aziraphale had never come to see him as equal, saw him as lesser even through everything and that twisted up ugly inside of him. Nausea pushed up against the back of his throat and he pushed it down, unable to bear the thought of pulling over. He pushed the pedal down harder.
It doesn’t matter now. He doesn’t need him. But Aziraphale’s desperate “I need you” echoes in his mind uninvited, and Crowley lets himself scream.
.
Crowley is sitting at a table for two in a public house, draining bottle after bottle. There’s no one across from him. He finds himself glaring at any lad or lady who might take the seat. He doesn’t know who he’s waiting for.
Sometimes, he thinks the air shimmers. He stares for a long time before attributing it to his swimming vision, and he orders another bottle for his table of one.
.
It’s a rainy evening, and in a bout of self-loathing Crowley wills it to rain harder. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to hope, to be so naive. He thinks of the torn canopy, and the Bentley jerks as it speeds down an empty road in the countryside, somewhere. He hasn’t really been paying attention. Another pulsing anger flares up in him, consuming him, hatred and fire and brimstone, and he feels like a proper demon. The Bentley takes a sharp turn too tight, too fast, and if it weren’t for the torrential downpour, its tires would’ve complained but otherwise been willed to be fine. As it were, the Bentley takes a sharp turn, and careens off the road.
.
Crowley blinks his eyes open one at a time. It’s blurry, and things come back to him slowly. He hurts. With a quick miracle he takes away that hurt, ignores the hurt in his heart that he just can’t seem to miracle away. He slithers his way out of the Bentley. He sees the shattered windows, the plants in his backseat scattered over the brush on the road amidst wet grass and ceramic pieces. It’s still raining, hard, and he’s sopping wet within a matter of seconds.
He doesn’t even bother righting the Bentley. He walks past, plopping himself down next to one of his most prized plants -- it had really good reason to grow beautifully as of late -- lying broken in the mud. His hand goes to brush it, gently, and if there’s any evidence of any tears upon Crowley’s cheeks, the rain washes it away silently.
.
The rain lets up a day after. Crowley hasn’t moved from his position. Mud is caked on his pants. He doesn’t miracle it away.
.
A week has passed, and the Serpent of Eden has considered all manner of courses of action. But there’s a yawning hole inside his chest, and it renders him unable to move, decide. He wonders if he should follow the lead of his plants, rejoin the Earth, turn into a snake and slither off into obscurity. Maybe then he would be able to forget everything.
.
The road has been mysteriously, miraculously clear of any passerbys -- or if there have been, they didn’t ever pull over to investigate the car covered in plants, and the dark figure just out of view behind it.
If someone were to happen to drive down this road, they might notice that there’s an ever-present, suffocating silence.
Everything is distant from here. Everything is distant from him.
.
The Silence lasts weeks. Then it breaks.
It’s only natural that the soft steps through the brush seem thunderous to Crowley’s ears. He’s been foggy, in a daze, unaware of the time but unable to sleep. He blinks for the first time in however many weeks and his eyes remember what it is to be eyes, flickering between blinks on the shattered pots, his plants that have merged into the brush. He stamps down a ridiculous jealousy he has for it before he tilts his creaky neck up to see what made the wind start up again.
His heart plummets, and that pesky nausea rears up, and Crowley doesn’t think he can do this. Wildly, in between his panicked thoughts -- because there are shimmering robes, angelic feathers right fucking in front of him -- he wonders if the Almighty thought allowing demons to get nauseous was an extra funny little punishment or if he’s the only demon who’s ever keeled over and emptied a stomach of nothing.
The figure is rushing closer to him and he feels like this is torture, honest to Somebody, he should’ve been using these tactics if he really wanted to get the job done. He hears a familiar voice, desperately trying to block it out, trying to make it not real. It’s fretting over him, “Oh, Crowley” and he doesn’t want to be touched, he can’t be touched, so he finds his limbs motivated to scrabble away in the dirt. They’re out of practice, though, clumsy, and he clunks his back against the Bentley. He puts his hands over his face to hide and feels like a child.
That nasty anger that he’d been tamping down rears up again as he feels Aziraphale get close enough to touch him, and, curling into a tight ball, he rips his hands away from his face and yells, desperately, “Stay away from me!” Aziraphale freezes, and then takes a few steps away, and Crowley wants to ask for him to come back, wants to tell him he never wants to see him again, just like he did when he left. All the horrible feelings inside him want to make Aziraphale hurt like he is, like he has been. The realization of it feels like cold water dumped over his cold-blooded skin and his hands dig into the dirt beneath him. He’s not good, and it always seems to come back to haunt him.
His head hangs, and he wants to go back to the Silence, the Nothing before he felt all these suffocating things. He almost thinks he’s alone again, but he hears soft footsteps begin to move forward again. He flinches, but doesn’t yell, and Aziraphale gently folds his legs underneath him, sitting across from Crowley. Close, but not touching. He stays silent, and it makes Crowley unbelievably angry again.
“What,” he bites out, harsh. He hasn’t looked at the angel’s face again, doesn’t think he could bear to feel what kind of rushing tide pool it would make out of him.
“I -- um, well,” Aziraphale starts, and it pangs so deeply familiar to Crowley that he thinks maybe he is being tortured. Maybe Hell found him and dragged him back. “I was in the area --” no, he wasn’t, Crowley thinks bitterly, “and, I thought to myself, I wonder how that wily ol’ serpent is getting on, I should pop down to -- to visit him…” Aziraphale trails off, obviously expecting this to have gone much differently, and perhaps realizing his approach of forced casualty is going awry.
Crowley’s anger, much to his surprise, seems to have drained out of him. It leaves behind a heavy, empty sadness -- bitter, resentful sadness. His brain catches up to his heart and he realizes that Aziraphale hasn’t actually apologized for anything yet.
“What happened to the Bentley?” Aziraphale asks suddenly, quietly, and Crowley ignores him. “And -- oh, dear, is this what I think it is?” Crowley hears Aziraphale pick up the broken pot pieces around him.
“Crashed,” Crowley eventually croaks out. He doesn’t want to mention that it was because he was driving too fast, too recklessly in a storm of his own creation, because it would be an opening for Aziraphale to grasp at normalcy again, to chide him for it, and Crowley doesn’t think he could take it. He can feel a pitying look and wants to swallow his tongue in shame.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley so badly wants to fall into his arms, feel warm and safe again, but he can’t let himself. “Crowley,” Aziraphale says again, and it’s accompanied by a movement, a scooch forward, a hand preparing itself to lay gently on Crowley’s cheek.
He wants to swear at him. Tell him that he doesn’t want his empty comforts, tell him to go away forever, to never come back, to see him in Hell or never again. But all of the tension that’s been rubberbanding inside of him, the past few months of empty, of wanting, of anger, of heartbreak. It’s all been exhausting. No matter how heavy his head feels, no matter how much his heart hurts, he cannot let himself give in, because he knows the thorns of rejection intimately and knows that they stab harder the second time around. He can’t fathom a third time -- fourth, if you count his sauntering.
“Crowley,” says Aziraphale, a third time, this time choked with pleading, “please, look at me.”
And maybe Crowley is a masochist, because he looks up at his angel’s face, and is frozen to see its beauty twisted up into pain, tears silently falling. It occurs faintly in the back of his mind that he’s never seen Aziraphale like this, not in the 6000-something years he’s known him, and it makes him feel truly evil all over again.
“I am so sorry, Crowley,” he says, “Forgive me,” and something in Crowley finally snaps after being pulled so taut. He scrabbles to wipe his angel’s tears away, grubby hands clumsily gripping Aziraphale’s face, and the tactile response pings in his brain: This is real. The trembling starts from his chest and travels out through his body, making him almost poke Aziraphale’s eye out, and it makes Aziraphale breathe out a shaky laugh and it sounds like bells to Crowley. He’s faintly aware he’s saying things, bearing his heart again to Aziraphale, unable to help it.
“I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,” he’s chanting, and he can’t seem to stop.
Aziraphale takes Crowley’s face in his hands, so tenderly, like he’s fragile and says “I’m here, my love,” and the combination of it makes Crowley curl into his angel’s chest, body wracked with sobs. He lets himself feel how warm Aziraphale is compared to his cold, stiff form, how soft his clothes are compared to the dried dirt all over Crowley’s. Aziraphale rubs soothing circles into his back and Crowley hates how he relaxes into them. His sobs subside, and he realizes he’s been clutching back at Aziraphale.
Fear grips his heart suddenly and he blurts out, “You’re not going to leave again, are you?” Aziraphale looks at him with wide eyes, and then softens.
“No,” he replies simply, while stroking Crowley’s back. Then, “I’d rather we be an us.”
.
They stay like that for a while, curled into each other, whispering reassurances. Aziraphale eventually miracles away the dirt from Crowley, but keeps the dirt left on his face from Crowley’s hands, because it’s comforting, despite how much he would usually despise it. Heaven’s so clean.
Crowley barks a laugh when he pulls away and sees the dried mud peppering his face, and miracles it away himself. He allows himself to settle into a smile and his angel is blessed to see it.
“Erm,” Aziraphale starts eloquently, and immediately his cheeks turn rosy. Crowley cocks an eyebrow at him.
“Would you, perchance, fancy a do-over?” Aziraphale says, and Crowley’s cocked eyebrow creeps higher, and that funny expression on Crowley’s face, Aziraphale knows, is him trying not to laugh.
“A do-over of what, angel?” Crowley says, and it's comfortable (and a little frightening) how easily they fall back into themselves.
“I believe, as you put it,” Aziraphale clears his throat, “a ‘fabulous kiss’?”
Despite the teasing, Crowley is still hesitant to quite believe anything happening here, and struggles to maintain the high-ground in the game they like to play. That, and it immediately reminds him of the look on Aziraphale’s face when he pulled away from their first and last kiss -- it was so unlike what he was expecting, hoping for that he found the hurt clawing its way back up into his throat.
“If -- If that’s what you want,” Crowley says, wavering. Sensing something wrong, Aziraphale tilts Crowley’s head up with a finger. Concern knits itself elegantly in his features.
“Is it what you want?” Aziraphale asks, and Crowley nods his head so immediately that it knocks Aziraphale’s hand away. “What ever is the problem, then?”
Crowley looks at Aziraphale as if he’s daft. When Aziraphale’s look of offense melts into genuine confusion, Crowley clarifies, “You didn’t like it last time.”
Aziraphale blinks. “Oh,” he suddenly frets, “oh, Crowley, I didn’t like the circumstances.” His angel looks away, and clears his throat, “I haven’t stopped thinking about it -- you -- us. I would rather like to do it again, just… different this time. Not a good-bye. A hello, perhaps.”
His hands snake onto Crowley’s face, tender as ever, hesitates before pulling off Crowley’s sunglasses. There you are, Aziraphale thinks, and Crowley blinks. He looks so much more vulnerable now, like he’s not letting himself believe something good can happen to him.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, shakily, small, and it’s all Aziraphale needs to lean in slowly, close the gap between them. It’s so soft it feels like a breath, and Crowley chases after Aziraphale’s lips when they dare to pull away. His angel pushes back in, still gentle, but no less desperate than last time. He feels Aziraphale’s hand sliding ever-so-slightly across his cheek, and he feels the tears well up again. His hands are wavering, moving between clutching and wanting to be gentle, too.
It’s better than last time, Crowley thinks hazily, much less teeth.
They pull away eventually, Crowley’s eyes immediately flicking over Aziraphale’s face for any sign of hurt, only to find him looking dazed. Meeting his eyes, his lips form a shy smile.
“Hello, angel,” Crowley says, and feels himself lean in again.