Work Text:
It was the day after. A day after Crowley's biggest mistake. A day after he lost everything and anything he had. Losing wasn't quite the right word to describe the occurrence of yesterday.
It was like he saw Aziraphale packing everything, ready to leave; then he handed him something more to take with himself. He gave him more reasons to leave.
Crowley slowly opened his eyes to the blinding sunshine coming through the window, his shades had fallen onto his lap. He put them back on and sighed.
There was a war. He had prevented one between Heaven and Hell, he prevented the armageddon two times it seemed but he couldn't do much about the one happening in his head. He never knew it could get worse after Aziraphale rejected his offer for them to go to Alpha Centauri but it had happened and it was far, far worse. Both times it made Crowley feel like he didn't matter. He never felt like an outcast, even when he was called a traitor by everyone in hell he didn't feel like he was feeling now. Back then he had him .
Aziraphale had told him before, long ago, that sometimes he felt like a match that was left behind in its box cause it couldn't set anything ablaze, so it was thrown away cause it had the same usage as an empty match box. Crowley didn't know what he meant, what that meant until that moment. The moment he went in that damned elevator while he saw Crowley.
His eyes and throat stung, he could smell the liquor from himself and the back of his car. That explains it He thought.
He looked around outside, helplessly searching for any sign of the angel. Like an idiot , he said to himself. He couldn't believe the way he kept on making a fool of himself just for someone who had chosen their mutual enemy, or at least what Crowley used to think Heaven meant to both of them over him. Was he really that bad and horrible, at least to Aziraphale?
His headache was slowly kicking in and making him feel worse about all that, the scent of alcohol showed him that he hadn't sobered up last night and overthinking was getting the best of him. The thoughts were flooding back to his head at the speed of light. He hit his head on the steering wheel harshly.
"Get out of my head angel… GET OUT!"
He could feel his eyes overflowing with tears again. He couldn't even risk playing music cause it would probably make it worse. He could vividly recall last night, driving at a 120 kilometres per hour speed all around London while he was playing music as a coping mechanism, which only made him drive angrier . Songs really drove his emotions like what he was doing with the car. He could've sworn he almost ran over 30 people over all last night cause it wasn't past midnight like old times he used to do that to clear his mind.
As he kept his forehead on the steering wheel, he looked at the sit next to him and his eyes fell to a white envelope and keys next to it. His heart dropped. He sat straight and grabbed them to make sure he was seeing correct cause it could've been the alcohol making him see things but they were real. He said: "No no no no no don't you fucking dare! you wouldn't dare!!"
He opened the envelope and take his sunglasses off. The letter wasn't that long. Crowley would've been thankful for that normally but now it felt like Aziraphale really didn't have a lot to say to him before leaving him for good. What was the point of a letter this short when we have phones, angel? He thought.
"Dear Crowley,
Here are the keys to the bookshop that by now you probably want to burn down. So do as you wish but don't burn our memories away, you still have a place… in here."
And the typical take care, Aziraphale at the end of the letter. He used to do that even when they texted, which they barely did.
Before Crowley decided to crumple the letter, he examined the paper and the words. It was written with a pencil and was erased and rewritten over and over again. He threw the wad of letter to the car's backseat, then he got out of the car and looked at the sky.
"At least you could've ordered one of the Angel's there to write the letter for you so it wouldn't have been messy like this." He yelled. He couldn't tell that he was angry that he was left behind or was sad about it; but all that he knew was that he didn't want, but needed him back. He continued: "you couldn't have just texted me, huh? I guess I'm an illegal contact in Heaven, Archangel Aziraphale."
It hurt him physically to call him that. It was always archangel Gabriel and he was the number one guy on his hit list, now he was away with someone he loved and Crowley was stuck on Earth with no one and nothing but himself.
He wanted Aziraphale back but apparently the only ones who were good enough, the only ones who were deserving to be around him with angel. That's why he wanted Crowley to be an angel again, to deserve him.
Crowley went back to his car and pulled the door closed furiously and dried the tears he hadn't noticed were there. He put his shades back on his face trying to put out the burning desire he had for the angel who seemed to not see him as anything in his life. Did he ever think there was something in his life that was only there cause of Crowley's existence? Cause Crowley himself did.
He turned the car on and said: "I won't just burn that damned bookshop, I'll burn London to ashes archangel." The soreness in his throat was still there, but he didn't mind it, it was nothing compared to the pain that Aziraphale had caused which wasn't physical and no amount of bandage and medicine could heal it.
Trying to convince himself that he didn't care about the goodness of the angel even though even imagining him being in any kind, even the slightest distress made him nauseous; he pressed the gas pedal, going to the bookshop.