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“The thing is…the thing is,” Crowley swallows, his throat clicking, looks at the wine bottle clasped by the neck between his finger and thumb and rolls it slowly against the table. He looks up and catches Maggie’s eyes. The sadness there is too much, he can’t do anything about that. He looks at Nina; pity. That he can fix. “The thing is, it’s a relief really, is the thing.”
“A relief?” Maggie sounds disbelieving, he knew she wouldn’t get it. Nina nods though, good old sensible Nina.
“Exactly! No more wondering, right? No more-” his throat catches again and he forces through another swallow. “No more hope. See? Weight off my shoulders, I can tell you.”
He held onto anger just long enough to climb into the Bentley and drive away from Soho, but eventually the anger burned out.
Anger at Aziraphale always does.
He made it a few miles with his hands clenched around the steering wheel and his teeth gritted to hold in a scream before the burning in his throat became too much.
So he turned the car around and found his way back to Give Me Coffee… and he doesn’t know if it was a little miracle or if Nina always keeps bottles of wine under the counter, but here he is.
Wallowing in relief.
Because it is good, really it is. He’s always known, deep down and also right there at the surface, that it would go something like this, if he ever unpacked this particular Pandora’s box.
Demons aren’t supposed to love, but more than that, demons aren’t loveable.
And sure, Crowley knows he does love, the dragging pain in his chest is proof enough of that. But it was working against impossible odds to think he might be the exception to both rules.
So here he is, not nearly drunk enough and putting on a tragic show for two humans who know more than they should because he needed to tell someone, and their advice wasn’t…it wasn’t terrible, before.
Crowley has always just had absolutely atrocious timing.
He spends the night on the sofa in Maggie’s cramped little flat, legs curled over one arm and neck twisted awkwardly against the other. She gives him a knitted blanket, striped in the colours of Aziraphale’s favourite flowers and Crowley buries his face in it until he has to stop breathing just to keep himself from inhaling wool fibers.
He thinks of how much easier it would be to just change into the snake. To uncurl it from his cheek and let the shape twist him into something colder, something that can wrap around itself to keep out the pain.
He nearly does it, but then he thinks of Maggie’s too kind eyes as she left a glass of water on the side table for him, told him she was just down the hallway if he needed anything. She seems like someone who would be terrified of snakes, especially giant ones almost as old as time.
He wraps his arms around himself instead, tugs the blanket tight and curls up his knees until he almost fits on the sofa. His hands tangle together over his heart. He doesn’t need one, but it’s always been there. A human heart can’t actually break apart, but Crowley knows the jagged shards in his chest are as real as anything else about this body.
The clock ticks down the minutes and hours of the night while he tries desperately to patch it back together.
In the end, the best he can do is gather all the pieces into one place and wrap a thread of demonic power around them to dull the edges. They pulse in agony, but at least he’s no longer at risk of being shredded from the inside out.
Crowley stays with Maggie for a week, the Bentley parked on the street, tickets building up on the windscreen.
Listens to her records on a gramophone and passes his fingers right over Vera Lynn with barely a flinch.
He’s sure Maggie notices him tucking the blanket under his jacket when he leaves, but she doesn’t mention it, just hands him a paper bag filled with Eccles cakes from Nina.
The smell hurts like a feather being pulled from his wings, but he places them on the passenger seat on top of the blanket and lets the scent fill up the Bentley.
He drives a smidgen above the speed limit and by the time he reaches his flat he knows the smell will linger forever now, no matter what Crowley might spray to try to get it out.
Shax never redecorated his flat when she took over, but he barely gives the place a look, there’s only one thing he wants from here and then he’ll lock the doors and sell it.
The box is where he left it, shoved deep within the recess behind the bed. Why flare up interest with demonic protections when a simple human hiding place will work so much better?
It’s big and heavy and Crowley can feel his back trying to bend unnaturally beneath its weight as he carries it down the stairs.
There are very few things he has acquired over his long existence on Earth, but almost all of the important things are in this box. Much too important to leave in his car with the plants when Shax took his flat.
He slides the box into the passenger footwell, closes the door and leans against it for a moment.
Everything on Earth that he cares about, tucked up together beneath his hands.
Pressure builds behind his eyes, a single tear sliding down the line of his nose.
He turns back and looks up to the only window of his flat that’s visible.
Aziraphale never visited much. It wasn’t theirs the way the Bookshop was, the Bentley. Not even the way the Ritz and St James’s Park were.
Despite everything, that’s rather the reason it has to go.
He pats a hand against the roof of the car, gives himself a nod and waits until his cheek is dry again before walking around and sliding in behind the wheel.
He turns the ignition and leaves the radio off.
It’s midday and Big Ben has only recently started to chime again.
He puts his foot down and reaches Petworth by two o’clock.
Crowley has always had two almost-dreams for the future.
He’d given one of them to Gabriel and Beelzebub, a sort of pre-emptive wedding present. He’s certain the nebula would have room for him to disappear into but he doesn’t much feel like being the third wheel in his own dream, so he figures he’ll just leave them to it.
The other, well, he never made this one, always thought it would be something he and Aziraphale could decide on together.
The estate agent tells him they have three cottages on the books that should suit him.
It doesn’t occur to him that viewings need to be booked in advance, so they don’t and he spends the afternoon trailing behind the agent’s garishly painted Volvo and visiting the three cottages.
None of them are right, but he likes the agent. He isn’t trying to be cheerful, in fact Crowley gets the impression that his arrival disrupted the man’s plans for a quiet day in the office filing and watching the latest cricket game on his phone.
Crowley asks him if there are any other cottages for sale with the other estate agents in the area and takes a little too much pleasure in the bemusement on the agent’s face, when his office calls to tell him he has just been instructed on those listings too, even though he’s never spoken to the owners before.
They are free for viewings too, of course, and it’s the fourth one that Crowley knows he’ll buy.
Barlavington is a mouthful of a location, but the tiny little village is accessed from Folly Lane and even if the cottage didn’t already have white stone walls and ivy wrapped around the door, Crowley would have taken it for that alone.
It takes time to buy a cottage, even if Crowley can pay the asking price right away.
So he gives the agent his offer, sends him copies of the latest Anthony J Crowley’s ID and signs up with the local solicitor before finding an out of the way road to park the Bentley on.
The South Downs are quiet and green and Crowley falls asleep tucked up with his plants and his box and the bag of Eccles cakes he still hasn’t eaten.
His phone rings and his emails chime and he wakes up when he needs to reply to something, and he sleeps when he doesn’t.
He visits the solicitor to sign everything they want and then he sleeps for a bit longer.
It takes three months and he’s woken more times than he thinks should be necessary by the dinging of his phone, but then he walks into the estate agent’s office and they hand him the keys to his new cottage.
The first thing he does is miracle up a conservatory for the plants, they’ve more than earned it; staying so fresh and alive in the backseat of the car for over a year now.
The second thing he does is rename the place. He’s good at filing paperwork, all demons are, and when that’s done he visits a local sign maker.
He only hits his thumb once, hammering the nails into place beside his door.
He calls it Warlock Cottage, because Aziraphale isn’t there to look soft and sad and call him nice and sentimental. And because that was always part of the dream too. His eyes sting, it’s probably the bruise on his thumb.
He gives himself another week to settle in, and then he calls Muriel.
He buys himself two armchairs and a comfy sofa for the lounge, Maggie’s blanket takes up a permanent home on the back of it. Crowley only allows his hands to run over it once a day.
“That is a lot of books.” Anathema frowns at him from the doorway to Azira- to the library and Crowley shrugs his shoulders like they haven’t climbed halfway up to his ears while they’ve been exploring the cottage.
Somehow it had seemed like a good idea when Maggie suggested it: a house warming party.
Now, with people scattered about the place, he’s not at all certain what he was thinking.
Only Muriel had seemed so excited when they heard him talking about it with Maggie and Nina, started listing off all the books they had read with house warming parties in them. His throat had burnt hearing the excitement in their voice across the phone and he had stroked Maggie’s blanket and thought it might be fun, after all.
It had only seemed right to call Anathema after that. Of course, with Anathema had come Newton, had come Shadwell and Madame Tracy. (It’s easy to not see Shax in her, the make up is all wrong).
It had been awkward at first, all of them standing about in the quiet of the cottage, fingers wrapped around the glasses Crowley had remembered at the last minute to buy. Then Nina asked him if he’d finally called BT about the broadband because she was fed up with zooming him on his tiny little phone screen and then Newton had jumped in with an offer to help, now that he was getting better with technology, that little bit of The Plan having blown itself out of him.
Maggie had started asking Madam Tracy where she got her skirt from and Shadwell had said he would go search the perimeter for signs of witches, for a small fee of course, Muriel following him, their questions falling almost nonstop from their mouth.
Anathema had asked for a tour and Nina had tagged along, a knowing smirk hardly hidden behind her wine glass.
There isn’t a lot to see, Crowley has only been here for a few weeks now. But he’d shown them the kitchen (“are those my Eccles cakes?” “don’t touch them!”), still decorated by the previous owners, the AGA on more than it ought to be because Crowley finds he can no longer stand the cold as well as he used to.
The conservatory is overflowing with life, the plants only too happy to show off for company, Crowley had warned them this morning after all.
He waved vaguely at the bedroom, playing down how much he doesn’t want to show it to them. He’d opened the door to Azi- the library as a distraction, not really thinking it through.
“Muriel did say you’d taken most of the bookshop.” Nina leans against the door frame beside Anathema, one eyebrow raised as she stares him down. Crowley is sure people used to be scared of him.
“I left them with almost perfect copies of everything.” He scowls.
Nina smirks, the eyebrow stays where it is.
“It’s not like they were going to sell them anyway.”
That had been the first rule he had given Muriel when he miracled the list of instructions onto the desk in the bookshop. Never sell any of the books.
The rest of the rules had been about fire safety, it wasn’t until he called after he bought the cottage, that he discovered all the fire extinguishers had been used up in the fight against Shax and her demon ‘army’. Thankfully, Muriel had taken his rules to heart and the upstairs room is once again full of them. It might not be theirs anymore, but that doesn’t mean Crowley would survive finding it in flames a second time.
“The bookshop?” Anathema asks, and when Nina finally looks away from him to fill her in, Crowley slinks back to the lounge, where Newton is half under the desk, cables in a tangle around him.
He hears the library door click shut and tells himself they won’t do anything to the books that Aziraphale wouldn’t approve of. Well, Anathema won’t and he’s certain she’ll stop Nina as soon as she realises just how many first editions he has in there.
There was always supposed to be a library. Bigger on the inside than it should be, so Aziraphale could stop pretending he did anything other than collect books for his own enjoyment.
It hadn’t seemed right not to have one now, even if Crowley doesn’t need it and then he’d thought about their bookshop and asked Muriel to send him all of their books.
The library has a familiar feel about it. Crowley leaves the door shut unless he’s running the hoover over the place.
He’s a demon, but he isn’t quite that masochistic.
Crowley remembers before. He remembers being surrounded by Her love and his angel-equivalent-of-siblings.
He remembers his name, from before, and hanging in the beauty of a new universe with Aziraphale, asking his first question.
When he remembers before now, he remembers the way Aziraphale’s eyes had shone as the stars had burst into being, the smile on his lips and the way he looked at Crowley, as though he had…well, as though he had hung the stars.
Crowley has always remembered everything, he just hasn’t thought about it even a little in the last 6,000 years, not since his angel raised a wing to protect him from the first rains in Eden.
Crowley’s heart started to break in their bookshop when he realised before was all Aziraphale had ever thought of.
He’s always known how unlikely it would be to be loved as a demon, he just thought that Aziraphale at least enjoyed spending time with him as one.
Six thousand years together, and Aziraphale had just been looking for that angel.
Months go by and Crowley hears nothing from above or below.
He’s officially on no one’s side but his own now.
Muriel keeps him updated on the bookshop and everything they’re reading and Maggie tries to gossip about the other shopkeepers but she’s too kind-hearted to be any good at it. Nina sends him memes in place of messages.
Anathema and Newton move in a couple of villages over and he finds himself with regular Sunday lunch plans. He’s not sure if all witches are good at cooking, but he finds himself committing each meal to memory, like he used to whenever he’d try something new during a temptation trip and Aziraphale wasn’t around to share it with straight away.
He visits Warlock more often than he should. Forks his tongue and bites it when the teenager asks after Brother Francis. He should explain everything, but it’s easier to just be Nanny Ashtoreth for the afternoon, so he doesn’t.
He redecorates the kitchen, paints the walls bright yellow, repaints them blue as soon as they’ve dried. He drinks his way through every bottle of wine he’s managed to acquire since he bought Warlock Cottage and when he wakes up the next morning, the walls are yellow again.
He leaves them, he doesn’t spend that much time in the kitchen anyway.
He listens to the news while he waters the plants now. The cottage is starting to go the way of the Bentley and he can’t trust that any music he puts on will stay in its original form.
Last week he flicked the radio on and everything was Adele. His eyes had been red raw for the rest of the day.
He listens with one ear to the way humanity keeps trying to destroy itself, sometimes he can spot a little demonic interference but mostly he knows it’s all just humans acting alone.
Then volcanoes start to erupt unexpectedly, earthquakes hit in places they really ought not to.
A river of blood runs through Egypt and Crowley’s phone starts to ring.
He sprays the last of the plants, giving it a halfhearted glare and then goes to find his phone.
There’s not really a lot humans can do to fight off the second coming.
This is the big one, like he told Aziraphale after the last almost-apocalypse, all of us against all of them.
Crowley isn’t part of any kind of us now, but he is definitely willing to stand in front of them.
A sick part of him has always wondered what would have happened if he’d faced Aziraphale before The Fall, if they’d stood on opposite sides, swords raised against each other. If Crowley hadn’t Fallen without once raising a hand against any of his brethren.
He unbinds the thread around his shattered heart and lets the pieces tear at his chest. He’s never actually built up walls around himself, Aziraphale was there too quickly for that, but he thinks he can use the pain to remind himself what he’s fighting for, even if he’s the only one.
Christ is reborn under a wandering star, he ages in a matter of hours.
Crowley leaves a message in the group chat, tells them he’s going to try something, the only thing he thinks has a chance of working.
He shuts up Warlock Cottage and spreads his dark wings wide, an Eccles cake tucked into his pocket.
The Son of God smiles when he finds Crowley sitting on a rock.
“Did you know they can fly around the world now?” He eats the Eccles cake with delicate bites, savouring it as only someone who has spent millennia in heaven can.
“They can see it without even leaving home.” Crowley tells him, fingers opening apps on his phone and handing it over once he’s got the map layers put on right.
“Amazing, everything they’ve achieved.” He folds a tissue around the remaining half of his cake and Crowley knows there’s a child somewhere that will get a treat tonight. “And yet still they fight.”
“They’re human.” Crowley says, tucking his phone back away and staring out at the sea as it crashes against the beach a few feet from where they sit. “She made them in Her image and She always did believe in righteous vengeance.”
“I was brought back to sit in judgment against humanity, but I was born to earn them forgiveness. To forgive them.”
Forgiveness to Crowley is a funny dance and a hopeful smile, apology shining out of blue eyes.
It’s rejection with words that will never not hurt when they’re used against Crowley the demon.
Crowley shrugs. “You’re human, too. She gave you free will.”
They watch the sea until the sun begins to set. It washes the world in pinks and purples.
“I’d like to see the world again.”
Crowley smiles, even as the tears spill down his cheeks. “I’ve got some time, you’re going to love what they’ve done with the place.”
Crowley has only returned to the bookshop once, since that morning.
He’d gone at night, had blinked into existence just outside and intended to blink back out again as soon as possible.
The bookshop books he had been willing to wait for, but there were some things tucked away upstairs in the little apartment that before Jim, Crowley was the only one who had ever slept in, that he hadn’t wanted Muriel to touch.
So he blinked in, walked through the doors that still opened at his touch and climbed the little flight of stairs as quietly as possible.
Muriel was curled up behind a bookcase, too focused on her book to pay any attention to the demon who didn’t want to be seen.
The main bedroom looked undisturbed. The bed covers still the same rumpled mess they’d been the last time Crowley had crawled out of them. He reached for the stack of books on the bedside cabinet, the ones Aziraphale had given him across the ages and caught sight of a bundle of cream and beige in the corner of his eye.
Aziraphale hated buying clothes, he hated even more miracling new ones up. He’d done something centuries ago to ensure any lost items would return to his home.
Crowley straightened out the jacket, before carefully refolding it, did the same with the waistcoat and trousers, the horrendously wrinkled shirt.
The bowtie fell through his fingers and onto the floor, Crowley following it as he finally broke into sobs that had been a long time coming.
Demons aren’t allowed to cry. Crowley learnt to cry silently in the hidden room of an Arc, surrounded by as many children as he had been able to save before the flood waters rose, listening to the dying screams of those he couldn’t.
He left the bookshop before the sun came up, books and clothes in hand.
He placed the books on top of the statue he saved from a bombed church. The clothes he hung up in the other side of his wardrobe.
He kept the bowtie in his pocket, wearing away the soft fabric with his fingers as the weeks went on.
Aziraphale looks tired. Crowley supposes he should really be concentrating on the legions of angels and demons that surround him, but as always, it’s Aziraphale he sees.
He looks tired and wrong in a gray suit. A pale imitation of his predecessor, when Aziraphale has always been so much more.
Crowley has many reasons to hate heaven, he adds this to the list.
“Where is the Son of God?” Michael twitches where she stands, Uriel poised to strike just behind her.
“Have you lost him already? How careless.”
Thunder rumbles as lightning cracks across the sky. If it’s meant to frighten him, they’re all a lot worse off than he thought.
“Crowley…” Aziraphale‘s voice sounds unused, like he hasn’t spoken in months. Or maybe it’s just that he hasn’t said Crowley’s name in that long. Has he thought it? Crowley can’t seem to manage an hour at a time without his mind conjuring up Aziraphale’s name. Even now, when at least a year has passed on Earth since he last saw him, Crowley finds himself turning with ‘Angel’ on his lips.
Crowley’s hands clench into fists at his side, but he doesn’t move. Stands with his wings flared, a lone figure before the entirety of Heaven and Hell.
“What did you do?” It’s Shax, stood there beside Satan. Crowley finds it easier to look at her than to face the only one who Fell before him.
He forces a grin, shrugs. “Who says I had anything to do with it? It’s a big planet, billions of people, it’s easy to lose one human if you don’t keep a proper watch on him.”
“It doesn’t matter.” That voice, like blocks of granite thrown from the sky. Metatron. Crowley hates heaven, he despised Gabriel after the whole hellfire incident, but he loathes Metatron. He grits his teeth hard enough to hear his jaw crack. “The second coming has begun. What can one demon do against the end of everything?”
He isn’t even here, the coward, just a voice in their heads. Crowley half expected him to be beside Aziraphale, a fatherly hand on his shoulder. But Aziraphale stands alone, a step away from the other archangels. The Supreme Archangel, all six pairs of white wings hanging limply behind him. Crowley aches to stand beside him. To have Aziraphale beside him, even now.
But Aziraphale doesn’t move and Crowley can’t .
“One demon?” Crowley shrugs again, shoulders tight with the tension he’s trying so hard not to show. “Nothing.”
He meets Aziraphale’s eyes then, one last glance because he’s too far away to try and steal another kiss and he’ll take anything he can get, he always has.
His hand burns and he feels something hot and heavy appear within his grip. He lifts the sword up, a grin splitting his mouth. He hopes it looks truly demonic behind the flames.
“But I lied.” He says, bringing his free hand up to draw the man beside him into view. “I might have had a little to do with it.”
He stands shoulder to shoulder with Her son, a flimsy barrier defending Earth and all its creatures.
There’s a moment, where he looks for Aziraphale again but doesn’t find him and then he feels the touch of a warm hand against his own, fingers curling that have only ever held his once before when they tugged him into a dance.
“I hope you have a plan.”
Crowley grins again, broken heart pounding a hundred different beats in his chest. “I figured we could just wing it.”
“ Crowley .”
He laughs, it’s twisted and raw but real, in a way very little has been for months. “Buckle up, Angel. This is going to move fast.”
Somewhere a horn blows, lightning flashes and thunder crashes and the charge begins. Crowley grins, closes his eyes and swings.
Crowley slips away before it’s over.
She might have abandoned them a long time ago, but Crowley wagered She was keeping at least one eye on the action.
It was one thing for humanity to kill Her son, it’s what he was put on Earth for.
But if he stood against Heaven and Hell, stood in defense of Her creations and was cut down…
Crowley has learnt to bet on the long odds.
He’d thought She might throw out a sign, crack the sky in half, tear a great hole in the floor of existence to keep them apart. Something that needlessly dramatic. He hadn’t expected Her to actually show up.
Crowley has no desire to be a part of that family reunion, thank you very much. It’s likely to get very messy.
So he slinks away while everyone is distracted. That he gets away at all, lets him know She isn’t any more eager to see him than he is. Or perhaps she’s just finally listening to him.
He heads back to Warlock Cottage. His phone is ringing almost continuously and he saves them all the bother and starts a zoom call. They crowd into their little boxes and Crowley groans when he counts them and finds one missing.
Slapping himself on the forehead, he wiggles his fingers and then asks Maggie to please go and collect Muriel from where he locked them away in the back office of the bookshop. The coast is clear now, they won’t have to fight.
Muriel looks worried but hopeful when they sidle into Nina and Maggie’s little window. Crowley nods, seriously, and their smile looks painfully wide.
“So you did it, lad?” Shadwell leans into the camera, giving them all a perfect view up his left nostril.
“Another apocalypse averted.” Crowley agrees, only feeling the tension in his body begin to release as they talk over the top of each other in delight.
It’s inaudible as one mic tries to take over from another too fast for more than individual syllables to break through and Crowley leans back in his armchair and rubs a hand against his chest.
He feels raw inside, like something passed through a shredder.
The sounds from the speakers quiet and it’s Nina who leans forward, one arm wrapped around Maggie’s waist. “Was he there?”
She doesn’t have to say his name.
Crowley nods, “of course.”
Nina is silent and because she is, so is everyone else. He finally cracks. “He gave me his sword.”
She smiles and beside her Maggie brings a hand up to her lips and presses it tight against them to keep any sound in.
“You owe us the whole story, but not tonight.”
Crowley blinks, looks out his window where it’s dark and stars glitter in the sky. It was morning when he left the cottage, it felt like only minutes had passed while he was gone, even if they had been some of the longest of his existence.
They say goodbye one after the other, until only Nina remains, having herded Maggie off with Muriel to make sure they get back across the street safely.
“Talk to him.” She says, before she leaves too.
“He probably won’t-” She cuts him off with a look.
“Talk to him.”
He tips his head to the side, surrendering. She smiles again, satisfied and fond. And then she’s gone.
The cottage is quiet. The silence almost too loud after all that has happened today.
Crowley pushes himself up from the chair with a groan and heads for the kitchen.
By the time he returns to the lounge with two mugs of chocolate and a plate of Nina’s Eccles cakes, Aziraphale is knocking at his door.
Crowley rubs his chest again, presses against the fragments of his heart and goes to let his angel in.