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You know that feeling when a cashier asks you if you want a receipt, and you say yes even though you don’t actually want it? And then you’re holding this receipt you don’t want, so you immediately crumple it into a ball and toss it into the nearest bin you see?
Yeah. That’s what Crowley feels like. (The receipt, to clarify.)
The road is a blur. That’s nothing new, because going anything even encroaching on being an acceptable version of the speed limit is sickening to him, but the road is doubly blurry because his eyes are doing this new, frightening thing where they make the entire world look all watery. Perhaps a symptom of some new disease demons are capable of contracting. Maybe that was Aziraphale’s first action as the new archangel in charge: I hereby declare that demons can now contract demonpox. Symptoms include wet and burning eyes, shortness of breath, an uncomfortable tightness in the chest, and an all-encompassing sense of impending doom.
That would certainly explain it.
And the rest of it is just… negligible. Yes, that’s the right word for it. Six-thousand years of grudging-acquaintanship-turned-unlikely-partnership-turned-inseparable-friendship-turned-unfathomable-pining — one-sided, at least — right down the drain. Totally negligible. Crowley is absolutely fine. Aside from the demonpox, of course.
“Bless it,” he mutters under his breath, and that’s all he says on the subject. His best friend has abandoned him to be the leader of place he never even actually liked, has rejected him and insulted him all in the same breath, and has thought he was in the right while doing so, to boot. But it’s fine. Everything’s fine! It’s all jolly good, completely and terrifically negligible.
It is so not negligible.
Because, okay, Crowley is definitely cool and suave and totally unaffected by the entire matter, obviously — no need to mention his sudden affinity for ice cream or alcohol or laying in bed for hours on end or accidentally not showering for, huh, how many days has it been again? — but there’s just. It’s just. Even though he knows that he’s fine and even deigns to tell himself as much on occasion (“You’re fine, Crowley. It’s just another day, Crowley. You can’t tell if your eyes are watering in the shower, Crowley.”) the rest of his inconveniently corporal form doesn’t seem to get the memo.
Crowley is fine but he has no appetite. Crowley is fine but he doesn’t want to do anything. Crowley is fine but when he sees some book that Aziraphale left in his apartment — way back before Shax took it over and he spent a not-so-brief stint living in his car — his stomach clenches unpleasantly and almost threatens to make him do something so disgustingly human such as to empty his insides, which are, in fact, already empty. He’s totally and completely fine except for the fact that everything about him feels like it might possibly not be fine, after all.
The worst of it is when Crowley’s mind gets to working, when his thoughts seem to take off all on their own and yank him this way and that, just like one might get dragged along behind a horse, having accidentally fallen off and managed to get one’s leg caught up in the reigns at the same time. (Not that Crowley speaks from experience.)
Because when that happens, there’s just no stopping it. Crowley becomes an unfortunate captive audience of one, offering his own mind his complete and undivided attention to the very subject he’s been trying his best not to attend.
Here’s the high and low of it, a sort of list of facts that send him into the depths of despair and that seem to have no solution discernable:
- Aziraphale is in Heaven, doing God-knows-what (literally), and Crowley has no idea what that is. Meanwhile, he’s used to knowing what Aziraphale is up to. Often in the moment, but at the very least in retrospect.
- Every day, for the rest of forever, will be like this. Maybe Crowley won’t feel so depressed about it in the future — maybe time and healing and yada yada yada is really true — but that doesn’t change the fact that he’ll never have what he had before. It’s Over now, and every day from now on, it will continue to be Over.
- They’ll undoubtedly have to interact again, some day. And that interaction comes with the weight of Aziraphale knowing everything. How Crowley feels about him, the fact that Crowley kissed him, the fact that he rejected Crowley…
- It’s impossible to avoid thinking about Aziraphale, because it’s impossible to avoid the things that remind him of Aziraphale, because everything reminds him of Aziraphale. Places, people, things, food, media. There doesn’t seem to be a single thing in Crowley’s life that isn’t somehow connected to him.
- Aziraphale doesn’t feel the same about him. After all that time, after all the signs Crowley thought he saw, after all the instances that made Crowley think they were basically, y’know, together. It just isn’t true. And Crowley is even more embarrassingly delusional than he’d thought.
But he’s managing. He’s dealing. Even if that just means continuing to exist, and occasionally succeeding in doing something productive, and even more occasionally managing to have even an hour or two where Aziraphale doesn’t cross his mind. But he imagines one must slough through the Managing Period of a heartbr— of demonpox —in order to make it to the Thriving Period, so slough he does.
It's several months before Crowley sees Aziraphale again. Three, in fact. That would hardly be a blink of an eye to the Crowley of days long past. They used to go years without seeing each other, back when they were grudging acquaintances, and still many more months than three, back when they were unlikely partners. But ever since they were friends, they hadn’t gone rather more than a few weeks without seeing one another, and even still, they usually talked on the phone in between.
So three months, in retrospect, feels a whole lot longer than it used to. And in the moment, Crowley can’t tell whether it feels too long or not long enough.
“Oh,” says Crowley, not for the first time. Because he already said it once before, about twenty seconds ago, when he first stumbled across the angel. In Aziraphale’s defense, he probably wasn’t expecting to see Crowley in his bookshop. But in Crowley’s defense, it isn’t really Aziraphale’s bookshop anymore, is it?
It took a good bit of time before Crowley was able to come back here again. In fact, he’d never planned to come back here at all. Not to this particular shop and not even to this particular street. That’s because some of the things that reminded him of Aziraphale were more like twinges than gut-wrenching stabs of pain — like seeing someone on the street enjoying a bit of sushi, versus walking into the very building where Aziraphale had spent centuries collecting and storing both books as well as tiny pieces of himself. Every inch of the shop screams Aziraphale.
But Muriel — that idiotic angel who doesn’t for a second pass as a human police officer, even when they're trying their very best — had come knocking. Literally knocking. Crowley still isn’t sure how they figured out where he lived.
“So sorry to bother you,” they'd said, standing in his doorway and bowing just slightly. “Only, I had a quick question and you weren’t answering the phone.”
“I don’t have a phone,” Crowley had said. It was true at the time. He’d thrown it against the wall some weeks prior, and not even because it’d been ringing incessantly. (In fact, he’d thrown it because it hadn’t been ringing incessantly. He’d started having horrific daydreams where the phone would ring and it would be Aziraphale’s voice at the other end of the line, the way it had been so many times before, and Crowley had destroyed the phone as the only foolproof way to put an end to those daydreams for good.)
“Oh. Well. That makes sense,” Muriel had said with a breathless laugh. “Anyway, I’m not really sure how much I should be selling the books for? Currency still doesn’t make much sense to me. I actually turned down the money for the first few customers, but then word got out, and now there always seem to be too many customers for me to handle, and I’m just not really sure how operating a bookstore is supposed to work, anyway—”
“You’re selling the books?”
“Sorry?”
It’d taken a while for Crowley to find his voice, mostly because of jerking stop-and-start motion the horse-dragging-him-in-his-mind was doing. It resulted in a clamor sort of like selling the books?! Are they mad? Those are his prized possessions! and what do we care? Fuck him. He’s gone now, anyway, he doesn’t need his stupid material objects in stupid Heaven and he’ll come back, surely, and all his books will be gone and he’ll be sad and— AND, doesn’t he deserve to be sad? Let them sell the books! Fuck it, let them keep giving them away for free!
And then, somehow, Crowley had found himself at the bookshop. Probably because he was still very much in love, despite how hard he was trying not to be. He’d taught Muriel the ins-and-outs of not-running a bookshop, such as turning the ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’ when a customer approached, marking up the prices on all the volumes, shutting down the shop for renovation, and the such.
He'd almost been sick that first time, standing in the place that was so Aziraphale that Crowley might as well have been able to turn around and spot him sitting primly in his armchair, but it’d gotten a little bit easier, every time after that. Not that Crowley had planned to come back. Muriel just kept seeming to have questions for him, and it was sort of nice to have people to talk to again, and the shop really was conveniently close to Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death, which had great espresso, at least. Oh, plus Crowley couldn’t quite resist the pleasure-pain of being there in the first place. Like pressing on a bruise, just to see if it still hurts.
“Oh,” Aziraphale says. Now, this is truly a great conversation they’re having. They’ve even both participated. Two ohs from Crowley, one from Aziraphale — whatever will come next? “It’s good to see you,” Aziraphale quickly continues. It comes with being an angel: small-talk and pleasantries. Actually, that’s not true. It just comes with being Aziraphale. He’s polite to a fault.
“Yep, yeah,” says Crowley, gruff. “You too.”
Small talk and pleasantries do not come easily to him.
The air between them is awkward. It’s thick with tension. It’s so different to how it’s ever felt before. Crowley is glad he’s wearing his sunglasses.
“What are you doin—”
“So how is it up in—”
“Oh, you go,” says Aziraphale.
Crowley clears his throat. “How’s Heaven?”
An expression flickers across Aziraphale’s face, too quickly for Crowley to read. He’s rarely had trouble reading Aziraphale before. “Oh! Oh, yes, it’s quite— well, it’s quite lovely, isn’t it? Heaven. Just as it’s supposed to be.”
Crowley’s heart sinks down into his stomach. Too soon, he decides. Three months is much too soon. “Right, right,” he says. “Yeah, that’s— that’s good.”
“Mhm!” Aziraphale smiles, his lips pressed tightly together. His hands are folded in front of him too, but his knuckles are white. “And how is it, um, in Hell?”
“Oh, Hell? Haven’t been back,” Crowley says. “Just been around here, you know.”
Aziraphale’s eyebrows twitch upward.
“Well, not here here,” Crowley says quickly, backpedaling. “Just Earth, y’know. Around. That sort of thing.”
“Right, of course,” says Aziraphale. “But you are, now. At my bookshop, I mean.”
“Had to drop off something for Muriel,” Crowley lies. “They're still getting the hang of things, I suppose. Keeps asking me questions. Doesn’t know how to use the till.”
“The till?” Aziraphale says, alarmed.
Crowley shrugs. He’s lying, still. He hasn’t taught Muriel how to use the till, because the till doesn’t get used, obviously. But he’s not feeling kind enough to clear up that up for Aziraphale.
“Better get to it,” Crowley says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder and taking a step back. “Temptations and things, you know how it is.”
“So soon?” Aziraphale says. Crowley imagines he sees a flash of disappointment there, but he’s been delusional before. He won’t give into his delusions now. “It’s just— Since we’re both here, I mean, oughtn’t we talk? About, well—”
“Raincheck, angel,” Crowley says. Shit, he thinks, because the pet-name slipped and he wishes it hadn’t. When did he even start calling Aziraphale that, anyway? “Bit busy these days. Got some errands to run. I’ll see you around.”
Aziraphale presses his lips together, offers a quick nod. His mouth twitches as if trying to smile, but ultimately doesn’t. Crowley turns on his heel and marches out of the shop without a backward glance, feeling much like he had three months ago.
They were standing in virtually the same places, weren’t they? Aziraphale was right there, in front of that bookcase. And Crowley was in front of him, so close to him. He was kissing him. And for just a second, it was bliss.
It was Aziraphale’s lips, soft and plump and warm and exactly how Crowley had always imagined them, slotted directly between his own. It was Aziraphale’s hands — after just a moment of hesitation — pressed against his back, his shoulder blades. His fingers had dug in, undignified, almost intentional. Almost enough to deliver bruises. More than enough to say here, stay. Closer, more.
And then it was absolute torture. It was Aziraphale stumbling away from him. It was that wretched look on his wretched face, stunned and disgusted and alarmed. It was his stupid, perfect, plump lips forming those stupid, wretched words.
I forgive you.
Never had forgiveness felt so painful. So sharp and mean and downright demonic.
Crowley doesn’t need to be rejected a second time. Once was more than enough to get the message across. So he lets the door slam behind him and he doesn’t look back, doesn’t see Aziraphale lean against that very same bookcase, doesn’t see him touch his lips the very same way he had that day.
Time continues to pass, as it is wont to do. Crowley continues to feel better and worse in waves. Some days he barely thinks about Aziraphale at all. Sometimes he even thinks that he’s better off, that this is good for him, that it opens up his future for new experiences and adventures. Other days, the weight of it all comes crashing back down on him. He’s dragged low again, sometimes seemingly without reason, and all he can feel is sadness. That new adventures are hardly worth experiencing with Aziraphale to share them with, that he’s far, far worse off this way, that healing is taking too damn long.
He sees Aziraphale several more times, after that initial re-meeting. It’s bound to happen, in the angel and demon business, even when one is an archangel and one is a technically exiled, not-exactly-working demon. Their meetings are always short and pleasant. Stiffly polite. All so how’s it been? and oh, good thanks, you? and good, yeah, went to a concert recently and lovely, lovely, how was that?
They’re conversations where nothing’s ever really said, which Crowley guesses isn’t exactly entirely new, if what Nina said is to be believed. Which, for the record, Crowley kind of thinks it isn’t. He knows now that he and Aziraphale tip-toed around talking about the things that actually mattered a lot of the time, but in all that space left over from not talking about the things that mattered, they talked about a whole lot else. Their days and their interests and their thoughts and their opinions and the things they disagreed about and the things they wanted to do and that funny thing they’d witnessed that day and that nice thing they did for a human (except hey that wasn’t nice, it was devious, all in an end-goal to ruin their week, you know.)
But despite the fact that their chats are so pleasant these days, Crowley leaves them feeling devasted. Feeling the weight of everything he’s lost. It hurts so good to see Aziraphale and it makes him want to see him sooner and also never again. It makes him want to curl up in his bed and forget to shower for days on end again, so he does.
One year, four months, two days, and nineteen hours. That’s how long Aziraphale lasts as archangel. One year, four months, two days, nineteen hours, and six minutes is how long it takes before he shows up at Crowley’s door.
Crowley heard the news just two minutes ago, over the phone by a freaking-out-but-trying-not-to-seem-like-they're-freaking-out Muriel. “It’s alarming, isn’t it? I mean, he seemed perfect for the job. And oh, lord, he’s going to want his bookshop back, isn’t he? Not that I want to keep it — I still can’t figure out how to open the till — but the shelves are all disorganized and he’ll probably be angry, oh lord—”
“I gotta go,” Crowley had said, interrupting her tirade when a new one began at his front door. And he’d swung it open, still not quite sure how to feel about the whole thing, and was immediately greeted with the sight of Aziraphale. Worrying his lip and wringing his hands and slumping into himself with relief the second he saw Crowley.
“Oh, you’re home,” he says, and he brushes past Crowley and invites himself inside, as if that’s something he still gets to do.
“Pardon?”
“Wine,” Aziraphale says, holding up a finger as he stalks toward the kitchen. Aziraphale doesn’t stalk. He never stalks! And he never digs through Crowley’s cabinets without asking, grabs a very nicely aged wine, miracles it uncorked, and takes a swig straight from the bottle!
“Pardon?” Crowley repeats.
Aziraphale lowers the bottle with a gasp, his face already flushed pink. He stares at Crowley for a second, blushes a little more, and raises the bottle right back to his lips.
“Bugger it,” Crowley snaps, because apparently they aren’t going to talk about the fact that Aziraphale just barged into his home and stole his wine without permission, and he storms into the kitchen and steals the bottle himself, if only to get a few sips in before Aziraphale can demolish it all.
“Thank you for having me,” Aziraphale says, always the polite guest.
“Mm,” Crowley grunts, still gulping the wine.
“I’m not sure if you heard the news,” he continues. “I quit.”
That surprises Crowley enough to lower the bottle, because from the way Muriel was talking, he assumed Aziraphale was fired. And he was a little viciously pleased about it. Serves him right. And he was maybe a fraction more pissed off about the fact that he decided to show up here, just barging back into Crowley’s life, like nothing had ever changed the very second everything went tits up for him.
Crowley’s still pissed, of course. But a fraction less.
“You quit?”
Aziraphale nods, that tiny, quick nod of his, and he grabs the wine back. Sips, this time, instead of gulps. “I hated it,” he gasps, widening his eyes as he leans forward against the counter. “Good lord, it was horrible. You think you’re in charge, but you’re not — not really — and it’s all so bureaucratic, you know. And you think you can change things and maybe actually make a difference, but there are so many strings and everything’s so tied up in all the different layers and- and— my metaphors are getting mixed here, but you get the point?”
Crowley crosses his arms.
“Crowley?”
“So, kind of exactly like how I said it would be, then?”
A guilty look comes over Aziraphale’s face. He wrings his hands around the neck of the bottle. “A little bit, yes.”
Crowley nods, slow. “Welcome back, then,” he says, walking toward the door. “Most of your bookshop should still be intact. Muriel will be glad to leave it. I’ll see you around.” This last bit, he says with the door open, his fingers on the handle as he holds it wide.
Aziraphale remains in the kitchen, lips parted. He blinks. “Um. But.”
“Um but what?”
He flushes. “I thought — well, I was hoping we could talk.”
“About?”
“Us,” Aziraphale says with a helpless shrug.
“There is no us,” Crowley says. “You made sure of that, didn’t you?”
“I was confused,” Aziraphale says. “I-I didn’t know what I wanted—”
Crowley scoffs. “Yes, you did. You wanted to go back to Heaven.”
“With you! I wanted to bring you with me, Crowley, remember?”
“As an angel!” Crowley snaps. “Because I’m not good enough for you like this!”
“What? No! I never said—”
“You didn’t have to say it. Maybe you wanted me by your side. Maybe you thought you needed me. But ultimately, you didn’t want me. The way I am.”
“Crowley…”
“I wanted you. I would’ve chosen us.”
“You still can,” Aziraphale whispers. Crowley’s throat closes up. Because it’s been a year and four months of torment and sadness and healing and nostalgia and pain and fleeting glimpses of him possibly being okay again, and here Aziraphale is, threatening to cock it all up.
Crowley shakes his head. It can’t be that easy. It can’t just be miraculously fixed after all this pain, like Aziraphale didn’t put him through all that demonpo— heartbreak — just to change his mind and think that everything would be okay again.
Maybe Crowley will make him wait just as long. Maybe he’ll make him wait twice as long, that’d be the real demonic thing to do. (Because, funnily enough, the question of making him wait isn’t if, but when. Because Crowley is still in love with the idiot. Because a year and four months isn’t really that long, not after 6,000 years, not when facing eternity).
He’s debating how he’s going to turn him down, just what he’s going to say when he does it, when Aziraphale slams down the bottle of wine and strides across the room. (That’s right — he strides, not stalks.)
Crowley doesn’t know what he was expecting. For Aziraphale to argue with him from a closer vantage point, perhaps. Or for him to walk out the door before Crowley could even say anything, just like he walked into that elevator, ensuring he was the one who got to leave both times.
He wasn’t expecting the kiss.
Aziraphale presses him against the wall with a hand to the chest, Crowley’s back overlapping with the still open door, trapping him there. His other hand is on Crowley’s face, cupping his jaw, his fingers reaching back into his hair. And his lips — they’re moving, this time. Much more than the previous. They’re pressing and pulling and urging.
Crowley’s hands, meanwhile, are in the air. He doesn’t know what to do with them. There’s a warmth in his chest and a giddy headiness expanding rapidly throughout him, plus a little part of him, much quieter now, still saying aren’t we going to kick him out?
But Aziraphale’s lips are warm and plump and perfect, even better than the way he’d imagined them, and more importantly, they’re kissing him. So Crowley’s hands find Aziraphale — his hip, his shoulder — and pull him in closer, tighter. He kisses him back and Aziraphale releases a gasp that sounds like relief, and Crowley makes a sound much closer in relation to desperation.
Aziraphale gets a hand in Crowley’s hair, at some point, and one of them — he can’t remember who — removes his glasses, and the door is still open and digging painfully into Crowley’s back now but he doesn’t care. There’s only this. Only Aziraphale.
“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale murmurs, between one kiss and another. “I’m so sorry, Crowley.”
“I forgive you,” Crowley mutters.
Aziraphale makes a pained sound and Crowley drags him a little closer, holds him a little harder.
It isn’t that simple, of course. A kiss doesn’t fix everything. It doesn’t negate the pain Crowley felt, or the resentment that had so many months to build. But Aziraphale is here. He wants us too. Everything is different. Everything will be better.
And if Aziraphale needs to spend a year, four months, two days, nineteen hours, and six minutes making it up to him… Well. For two immortal beings, that amount of time is negligible.