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There is a smudge on Crowley’s glasses.
This had, of course, happened many times before, with many different iterations of the glasses. Glasses have a vast capacity of use. Ignoring the air of mystery and style they obviously added to any given fashion of the times (Crowley permanently disregarded the use of glasses by “frat bros” for this point to stand), they were perfect for hiding. A hangover could be disguised as cool composure on a sunny day. The mark of a lost fight could never be kept away to save someone from the embarrassment. In his case, the obvious were his eyes. Not that people would notice much if he took them off. It was reality, after all, as he’d once told–
Crowley’s grip on the wheel tightens, as does the press of his lips together.
Glasses were good at hiding a variety of things. Eyes being the window to the soul, and blah blah blah.
Glasses were also completely incompatible with kissing. Proper kissing, at the very least.
Crowley had kissed quite a few people over the last 6000 years. Being a demon on Earth was a job that Crowley took very seriously (when it suited him). If one was to be employed under a supervisor who valued temptation and trials as skill sets for hire, it only made sense for him to have a full understanding of what exactly was so tempting in the first place. It was just best practice.
In Crowley’s opinion, kissing was one of the more baffling and beautiful things humans invented. Intimacy was somewhat of a neutral ground between Both Sides, because once people had it you had a lot of wiggle room in either direction. Not only that, but intimacy was so much more than just the fleshy bits. If anything, the fleshy bits were the most boring parts of it all. Intimacy was stepping into a shop alone and picking up something that you remember the other person saying they needed. Intimacy was hearing a conversation and wishing they were there to hear it with you because they would hate what was being said and that would make you laugh. Intimacy was the silent conversation of brief eye contact, instantly understood. Intimacy was seeing someone unarmored and open, with a book in hand and a cup of tea besides. Intimacy was reading the language of someone’s life, where you know what the smallest shift in tone means or how tension is carried more in their hands than anywhere else. Intimacy was allowing yourself to be read in return. To be seen.
Crowley had kissed plenty of people. Intimacy was reserved for… well. It was reserved.
Crowley first kissed a man in Rome. The flush of Roman summer heat and oyster dinner with Aziraphale had left him…tingly. It wasn’t comfortable, exactly, nor was it unpleasant. He wasn’t particularly inclined to explore why this feeling had suddenly arisen with such damnable timing, but as Aziraphale said his farewells and went to do whatever angels do, Crowley felt the slightest shift, the slightest ache.
No, that wouldn’t do at all.
Crowley slithered his way into the nearest lupanar. These places hadn’t even needed his intervention to crop up, but he still wrote back to Hell that all was well in the debauchery and promiscuity departments, thanks to him. In truth, humans loved pleasure. They lived for it, if they knew what was good for them. Their lives were so short after all (the barest blinks), why shouldn’t they savor every moment? Why shouldn’t they chase every scrap of joy from someone they wanted? They didn’t have the luxury of time.
These particular humans wasted no time. He was barely through his first decanter of wine when a man leaned against the wall next to him. He was older than most of the boys. Like the Grecians, Romans idealized youth, often to a troubling degree. This was a man who held himself with the assuredness of someone who had worn in the way he moved through the world and was rather pleased with himself for it.
“Are you looking for company?”
“Mmm,” Crowley affirmed with a nod. “Not sure exactly which direction to go. Temptations abound, and all that.”
The man raised his eyebrows and laughed. “Can I tempt you with a sample then?”
Crowley smirked, he couldn’t help it. Offering temptation to a demon was just cosmically amusing. “Be my guest.”
The man was direct in his approach. He stood between Crowley’s legs where he sat on a stool and plucked the clay cup from his hand. He ran a thumb along Crowley’s jaw and let his hand settle on Crowley’s cheek, his other hand resting lightly on Crowley’s chest. He was firm and somehow gentle when he guided Crowley’s mouth to his. It was confounding, at first, the way the lips moved, sometimes wider, sometimes wetter. Crowley found himself frozen and unable to move as this man gently pressed on, until his body caught up with him.
Some instincts were buried deep, but they could be found all the same.
Crowley parted his lips and relished in the sound the man made as his tongue began to explore his. (He wouldn’t remember it was forked, Crowley would be sure of that). The man made the most delightful hiss of sound when Crowley nipped at his lower lip, and Crowley found himself chuckling in his own self-satisfaction, arms entangled through this man’s already loosely draped robes.
His glasses hadn’t lasted long once they went to the man’s room. (The man wouldn’t remember his eyes either, despite the fascination he professed when they were revealed). Crowley never asked his name, and the man never offered. And in the morning when Crowley left, with a broader depth of understanding of the intricacies of human pleasure by means of practical application, he found his glasses filthy with smudges and fingerprints, and frowned.
Further experiences with kissing (and more) didn’t always happen after he saw Aziraphale. But they didn’t not happen afterward. And to ensure that that was definitely, certainly, not what happened, Crowley made a habit of sampling the Earthly pleasures of the flesh at least every few years. And if those dates sometimes aligned with the times he saw Aziraphale for a dinner or show and they said their goodnights after becoming warm with drink and comfort, well, then it could be chalked up to coincidence.
The only consistent event stringing every experience together was that, without fail, the glasses were a pain in the arse. It was a small thing, but small things were the perfect misplacement for a deeper frustration.
When a demon has nearly 6 millennia under their belt, it becomes far too easy to put aside a feeling that prickles and nudges and wants. One must accept that pleasure and comfort can take many forms, and not all forms can come from every place.
It was 1967 when Crowley wasn’t able to keep the feelings separate any longer.
Aziraphale was as tense in the passenger seat as Crowley had ever seen him, but this was different than ignoring-all-legal-limits-of-the-road tense. Crowley knew better than to play glib. The tool of his own (potential) eternal destruction sat in his hands, and weighed barely anything compared to the weight of its meaning. Aziraphale had given it to him, even if it was 105 years after he posed the question, and there was something so dreadful in this folding of a hand. It was another shift in their relationship, another intimacy too close to the bone and the nerves to have proper words for it. The ache that had been building in Crowley’s chest (and was being soundly ignored, thank you) suddenly spasmed and opened wide. He felt the breath leave him for a moment. Felt the longing it left in its wake.
He could tell Aziraphale. He could carve into that chasm of his chest and finally lay it bare for his angel. The only being in the world who had deigned to see through his veneer of nonchalance and cynicism to the truth of him. The only being in the world who saw that truth at all, and the bastard didn’t even have the decency to turn away. Aziraphale was the only being in the world Crowley wasn’t meant to want.
Instead he was glib.
“Should I say thank you?”
“Better not.” The words were tart.
Crowley had no heart to speak of, and yet he swore it was racing. He could do it. He could tell Aziraphale what this meant to him. What he meant to him. But not just yet. He needed a moment. Maybe they could go to the bookshop and have a few drinks and then– “Well, can I drop you anywhere?”
“No, thank you.”
Crowley felt the loss needling into the edges of the chasm. Aziraphale was going to leave and they weren’t going to talk and he wouldn’t be able to explain–
“Oh, don’t look so disappointed.” Aziraphale was smiling as he did whenever he was beyond the bounds of his comfort and wanted to diffuse things. “Perhaps one day we could… I don’t know. Go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz.”
That was all fine and good but Aziraphale couldn’t be trying to go already, not now, not with Crowley cracked open, finally, after all this time. “I’ll give you a lift.” Even a few more minutes (tiny, baby, short things) would be enough time to swallow his pride and find his courage, he was sure of it. “Anywhere you want to go.”
Aziraphale looked at him the way he sometimes did when he thought Crowley wasn’t looking. A small almost smile that was laced with a tender ache. It was something like fear, not of Crowley, but of something far more terrible. And this time there was no glancing away or obfuscation. Aziraphale was afraid, and beyond that, Crowley swore there was a shape of that same chasm reflected back in that gaze. “You go too fast for me, Crowley.”
Without another word the angel was gone, out of his car and off to do whatever angels did. Crowley tried not to let his eyes linger on the seat. That feeling from Rome was beyond being called tingly or prickly or whatever small dismissive word Crowley could come up with. There was a hollowed out pain unlike anything he’d ever known (and Hell had not held back after the laudanum incident of 1827). This wasn’t something you could conjure from hate or spite or malice. This void, this emptiness, this feeling as if he’d realized he had another arm only to be told it no longer belonged to him; this came from intimacy. This came from letting in the Goddamned light.
Crowley looked at the thermos, stowed it in the glovebox, got out of his car, and walked into the club he was parked next to. It was time to find something to do with his hands.
It was something of an event. Crowley rarely left himself without restraint, these were humans after all, but he couldn’t find it in himself to stop person after person from touching him. Holding him. Whispering sweet and empty words of care and delight and longing. Kissing him again and again and again. He was a demon starved and he would be damned again if he couldn’t sate himself as he always did. He would climb to the heights of pleasure again and again and again if it dragged his infernal mind from the smell of citrus and old books. He would fill this void with every soul he could drag to the depths of his need.
The bender lasted days before Crowley finally gave up. His glasses, long dismissed and miracled to his jacket pocket, were waiting patiently for him as he dressed and prepared to leave. When he put them on he could barely see through the evidence of his dalliances. It was this small frustration, this one constant companion that was present every time he sought this comfort, this reminder that these excursions were a shell of the thing he could no longer deny that he wanted, desperately, that sent him over the edge. This reminder of his own cowardice was enough to make the chasm tear itself open again, somehow more violent than before. With a flash of fire and crack of thunder, the glasses shattered in his hands.
Crowley ignored the stirring bodies behind him and made his way out to the Bentley, miracled away the tickets on the dash. He grabbed another pair of glasses from the glove box, staunching ignoring the thermos still sitting there, and made his lonely way back to his apartment.
Crowley didn’t kiss someone again until four years after the apocalypse that wasn’t.
Crowley wasn’t so reserved as to say he didn’t miss his traditional every-few-years samplings. He often missed the cries he could draw from someone with a clever flick of his tongue or a carefully placed bite. He often craved the ways hands had of lighting up his skin and finding new paths to bring him to those familiar heights of bliss. He often relived his fondest memories of losing himself so wholly to a person that it was enough, if only for a brief time.
Crowley had imagined what kissing Aziraphale would be like.
Crowley imagined it would be in the bookshop. Crowley imagined plucking a book gently from Aziraphale’s hands on one of their innumerable tea times (in which Aziraphale would read and Crowley would sprawl himself upon the couch, miracle a sunbeam so it warmed him just right, and nap) and relishing in the angel’s annoyance. Crowley imagined placing the book down next to Aziraphale’s tea and his own glasses, immediately discarded in the wake of their routine. He imagined the warmth of skin on skin; a startled, small gasp of air when their lips met. He imagined the feeling of slotting into place (finally, finally) with no more unsaids or almosts or what ifs.
Crowley imagined freedom and rapture and comfort and home.
That wasn’t how it went.
Instead, Aziraphale is telling Crowley he could be an angel again. Aziraphale is telling him that he would be second in command, that things would be different. Aziraphale is telling Crowley that of course Hell wasn’t the correct choice (all things from Hell being evil and bad, of course, of-bloody-course ), but Heaven was truth and light. Heaven was goodness. Aziraphale is telling him that it would be nice.
Crowley is faced with the only person who had ever seen him, and for the first time was doubting if the angel ever truly had.
Crowley lets the fear that introduced itself transform into fury, and he fights back. Crowley fights by tearing the chasm in his chest apart, because if Aziraphale was leaving (and he wasn’t leaving, that was absurd) then he'll be damned a thousand times over if he lets him go quietly. Crowley fights with the admission of his comfort in their recent years, of their routines and rhythms. Crowley fights against the traitorous lump in his throat, and asks for something he has wanted for far longer than even he is willing to admit. Crowley fights with his own truth, his own insufferable soul.
Crowley fights for his light.
Aziraphale acts like he didn’t hear a word, and yet, the angel is suddenly upon him. The angel is saying the same nonsense, voice smaller, pleading, desperate, and too close. Crowley can't catch the breath he doesn't need, feels himself lost. Floating. Separating. He might have been discorporating, for all he knew.
Crowley anchors himself in Aziraphale's eyes; too sad, too open, and still not seeing. “You can’t leave this bookshop.”
“Oh, Crowley.” His name a sigh on the angel’s tongue. Aziraphale’s eyes soften as if he’s solved the puzzle, as if he’s finally heard and seen and understood, and knows what needs to be done. He smiles. “Nothing lasts forever.”
Crowley feels the chasm shatter and consume and turn his stomach. The fight leaves him, quickly as it had come, and he looks to God. It's a small look, a glance really, a plea to please not take just this one thing that he cares about. That he loves.
“No.” He can’t look at the angel’s eyes. If he does, he’ll lose what little self-control he has left. He’ll fall to his knees and beg. “No, I don’t suppose it does.” He slips the glasses on and moves past the angel, not daring to touch, defeat tracing the lines of his steps. “Good luck.”
Crowley isn’t prepared for Aziraphale to beg, in his own way. He’s barely in control when he stops moving, stops fleeing, just because the angel asks it of him. He isn’t prepared for his desires to be turned on him as if it were simple, as if what he had just confessed was no different than the Arrangement, as if whatever was left of him wasn’t hanging from his limbs in tatters. He isn’t prepared for Aziraphale’s anger, for Aziraphale to switch to guilt and beratement so, so easily. But ah, old habits and all that.
Crowley hopes his gaze burns through him when he fights the nausea long enough to risk the look. Crowley hopes the angel regrets and regrets and remembers.
“You idiot.” He hopes it stings. “We could’ve been…us.”
Something in the way Aziraphale won't hold his gaze now, in the way he frowns and crumples and turns away, gives Crowley courage.
Before Crowley can second guess himself, before he even realizes he’s moved, he is kissing him. It is, after all his imaginings, in the bookshop. The warm beam of sunlight is too far to the right, however. There is no tea and his glasses are firmly on his face. Aziraphale does let out the startled gasp, but it’s warped and sharp. Aziraphale’s lips are warm and right and for one wretched moment Aziraphale is holding him, however shakily.
It’s terrible. It’s more righteous than anything else he’s done in the last 6000 Satandamned years. It hurts.
Crowley knows what it’s like to be kissed when you’re wanted. Crowley knows what it’s like to melt into someone’s touch for the sake of their closeness. Crowley knows it’s different for every person, but you can always find the pattern through the dance. Crowley knows just what to do and just how it should go.
Crowley knows he’s gone too fast once again.
When he lets the angel go, he can’t help but drop his anger and hope. He can’t help but search familiar eyes for the love he knows he hasn’t imagined. He waits for the realization that this is all so stupid, because of course it should be them. On their own side. Crowley waits for the apology and everything that he’s ever dared to hope for that comes after.
“I forgive you.” The words are bitter.
Crowley sighs. The open wounds make themselves all too known in the wake of this strike, this Godly act of wrath, but he won’t let Heaven’s finest see him crumple. Not now. “Don’t bother.”
Crowley doesn’t want to stand there, but he’s nothing if not stubborn. A little vexing, even. He watches numbly as Metatron and Aziraphale walk to the lift. He sees the distress flash on Aziraphale’s face a moment before he looks at Crowley. Crowley sees the doubt he knew lived there, he sees the regret he had hoped for and hates himself a little for it, and waits for the angel to make his choice.
It should have more bells and whistles, Crowley ruminates as he slips into the driver’s seat and goes. The world carries on around him. People getting coffee. People swearing at their fellow drivers. People walking to their job or their home or their someone. People moving and living and feeling nothing more despite the shift in the axis the entire world seems to have taken.
Crowley can’t find it in himself to change their song, and that’s when he notices his glasses.
The smudge is a perfect replica of every kiss he had before.
And it’s this small thing, this final hit, that chokes him. He pulls over and lets the sobs wrack through him. He curses Her name and he hopes She hears. He hopes he draws Her wrath too.
Anything would be an improvement on this sudden and total loneliness.