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"Honey, you're familiar like my mirror years ago
Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword
Innocence died screaming, honey, ask me I should know
I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door"
—Hozier, “From Eden”
It had only been a month when Crowley realised he could no longer quite picture the exact shape of Aziraphale’s nose.
You’d think, after so many thousands of years spent in his orbit, he would be able to precisely picture every curve, every shade, every imperfection. Perhaps it’s that they spent too long orbiting each other, separate celestial bodies, never truly colliding, that had left this fog in his memory.
Maybe it was for the best.
It had been a long, long time since Crowley had worshipped anything. But he had been ready to worship Aziraphale, if he’d only been given the opportunity.
There was something painful there, like a little thorn in his side, a nagging emptiness where there should have been a warm smile. The loss of a second half; the one who he could turn to with a joke or a snarky comment. The one who he could unthinkingly call for a drink, or with a midnight query.
Without Aziraphale, he was left off-kilter, unbalanced. Crowley found himself looking over his shoulder, a snide remark on his tongue, before realising that there was nothing there but empty air. The humans walking on the sidewalk next to him gave him suspicious looks and walked a bit faster.
It didn’t bother him, not really.
Life went on.
It does that, especially when you’re the one who prevented the Apocalypse and the end of life as it’s known. It was a cruel irony, really, that Crowley put in all that effort just so he could stay on Earth. With…Aziraphale.
What was the point, now?
Crowley tried sleeping more. That was one thing he could do—he was good at it. He hadn’t spent the better part of a century sleeping for nothing. But the night was no longer a refuge from his memories. Aziraphale came to him in the darkness, showing up in his dreams—sitting across from him in a tea shop, smiling at him from an armchair in his book store.
Crowley decided he didn’t need sleep.
Crowley learned to golf. It was the worst of humanity that seemed to like golfing—he was always surrounded by wealthy men who liked to talk about their young, beautiful wives and the problems with the staff on their extensive estates and more ways they could go about making their own lives easier and the small people’s lives harder. Crowley would have been delighted, years ago.
He wasn’t such a good demon, now.
But he wasn’t a demon, really. Not anymore. Not since he’d started seeing the shades of grey that the others seemed blind to.
The shades of grey that Aziraphale ignored.
He’d known that Aziraphale was an idealist, of course he did. But he’d also thought that the two of them saw the world with the same eyes, that Aziraphale had—finally—begun to navigate the divide between good and evil, heaven and hell, just as he had long ago.
But clearly, he’d been deeply mistaken.
Crowley was bored.
He’d polished his Bentley three times before he found a spot of yellow on the rear door that certainly hadn’t been there before.
He didn’t polish it any more.
What is a former demon supposed to do, when he no longer has a reason to exist?
He tried to pick up a new hobby. He worked his way through painting, stamp-collecting, and bird-watching, but (three brutally torn canvases, one lost first-edition stamp, and eight pigeons later) he found himself, once again, at a dead end.
Crowley decided to go look in on the bookshop. Really, what had the Metatron been thinking, giving it to Muriel? Surely, it would no longer be standing. It would have gone up in flames, or spontaneously combusted.
He didn’t care, of course. The visit was only out of curiosity.
Miraculously, the bookshop was, in fact, still standing. Curiosity satisfied, Crowley made to continue down the street, but paused.
There wouldn’t be any harm in peeking in, would there? Out of curiosity, of course. Nothing more.
The bell rang cheerily as Crowley opened the door, drawing the attention of the few people inside.
There was a young couple, browsing one of the shelves.
And an older, white-haired man, nattering on to them about some book or other.
They turned to look at him.
He stared back.
Crowley, said Aziraphale.
Crowley turned on his heel and walked out.
Why was he back?
He was supposed to be gone.
He was supposed to be upstairs, fixing the things that needed reformation, doing all the good that supposedly couldn’t be done on Earth.
The good that would only be hindered by Crowley’s unchanging presence.
He wasn’t supposed to be standing there, in his bookshop, looking just as he had the day he’d stepped into that elevator.
God, Crowley could see his face perfectly now. That comforting fog that he’d held onto like a lifeline had been banished in an instant, replaced with Aziraphale’s perfect, stubborn face in explicit detail.
Despite his sense of self-preservation, Crowley felt himself drawn back to the bookshop. He managed to valiantly fight the urge for a week before he found himself at its door once again.
“Crowley.”
He raised an eyebrow in response.
“How are the plants?”
Crowley barked a laugh. “The plants?”
Aziraphale inclined his head a little.
“The plants are fine.”
A pregnant pause.
Aziraphale had never been able to keep quiet under pressure. “I’m back?”
“I can see that.”
“I realised—Heaven isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Crowley laughed humourlessly. “Oh, you just realised that?”
“I—”
“Six thousand years—we averted the Apocalypse together, or did you forget—and you just figured out that maybe Heaven isn’t the magic fairy-land that you thought it was?”
Aziraphale grimaced. “No! I went there to fix it, don’t you understand—I wanted to make it that way, so it could be that place—”
“You can’t fix something as broken as Heaven,” said Crowley, “Not even you, Angel, not alone.”
“I know that now. That’s why I came back.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have. We’re getting on just fine here, the bookshop’s been perfectly fine. Where’s Muriel? She likes to have tea at the shop across the street after she closes for the day, you know—they’ll be expecting her.”
“I sent her back.”
“Back?”
“Back to Heaven, of course.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Oh, Crowley. You know why.”
“She loves it here. The books—”
“This isn’t her home. She doesn’t have anyone here. She seemed more than happy to go on back, once I gave her a new assignment—she’s been promoted. I daresay she’ll get more done than I was getting done when I was there.”
“And why is that?”
Aziraphale shifted, not meeting his gaze. “Something was missing. Crowley, I couldn’t work without someone else—I needed you there with me. And you weren’t going to come up there. So I left, and now I’m here.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You can’t leave here—leave me—and come back, and expect everything to be the same, and for everyone to welcome you with open arms. You said it yourself, Angel, nothing lasts forever.”
And with that, Crowley walked out, leaving Aziraphale speechless in the bookshop once again.
Aziraphale had been his, once.
They’d orbited each other, neighbouring stars. Now, Crowley’d gotten used to being alone, the centre of his own lonely solar system. But Aziraphale was here again, and his presence threw Crowley into an uncontrolled spiral, left him unbound and disoriented.
But of course, just as the farthest planets still orbit the sun, Crowley found himself dragged in by Aziraphale’s undeniable gravitational pull.
He found himself back in the bookshop only days later.
This time, he was the first to speak.
“Why did you come back? And before you say anything—I think we’ve known each other long enough that I deserve the truth, this time.”
“They wanted me to do it all. I couldn't.”
“What? You’re one angel. And Heaven is—infinitely large. They can’t expect you to take care of all of that.”
It was true. Aziraphale lived for the small things. A cup of tea, feeding ducks in the park, his bookshop—the space between Crowley’s body and the wall. While he had strength, it was a quiet one, not one that could fill the oppressively massive space that was Heaven.
Crowley was still furious, of course.
“They said—it was a contract. I agreed without knowing what I was agreeing to. There were terms, they said, there were rules. I’d been away too long, didn’t remember what it was like there. And it hasn't changed.” Aziraphale sighed deeply.
Oh.
There it was.
An acknowledgement, finally, that Heaven wasn’t perfect. One Crowley had been waiting on for who knows how many eons.
Hearing the admission, though, didn’t bring him the joy that it might once have.
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here. If there was a contract…”
“Well. I may have—set a little fire. I don’t think they liked that much.”
“...what?”
“It was very small! Really, only a few files, and they were hardly important.”
“Angel—”
“Well, I’m not sure if that’s entirely…accurate anymore.”
Crowley was speechless.
“After all of this—how should I put it?—trouble that they’ve had with me,” Aziraphale continued, “I think they’re done.”
“They can’t—they can’t take that away from you!”
“Well, Crowley, they did. And perhaps it’s for the best.” Aziraphale sighed, a little wistful, “An unreliable angel is no angel, really. And we both know that neither of us have been fulfilling the job requirements for quite a while now.”
Well. That may be true, but—
“And all you did was set a little fire?”
“Yes?”
“I’m disappointed. You couldn’t at least have caused a little more havoc while you were there? Broken a window? Painted some graffiti? Give me something, Angel, really, you should’ve gone out with a bang. Give them something to talk about.”
Aziraphale stared at him incredulously, then laughed. It was a beautiful sound.
Aziraphale was Icarus; he’d flown too high, tried to do too much, only to have his wings burned by the sun. But Crowley was there to catch him as he fell, plummeting to earth to land at Crowley’s feet.