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In the dream I don’t tell anyone, you put your head in my lap.
—I Had a Dream About You by Richard Siken
***
Crowley wakes up in his newly restored apartment. He has a crick in his neck from sleeping on the couch—for some reason, after Shax gave him back the place, his bedroom had disappeared. Which he’s fine with, honestly. He’d only ever used it for sleeping, and the couch works well enough.
His plants are back to their normal corners, but they don’t seem very scared of him anymore. He does a bit of threatening but his heart’s not in it, and they all know it.
“Whatever,” he mutters. He gets in the Bentley and drives to the bookshop.
***
The dream goes like this: he’s standing on the stage. His hands are shaking. He knows Aziraphale is looking at him, but he can’t see him. His hands are shaking. Aziraphale is counting. His hands are shaking. Aziraphale’s eyes are the color of the sky when the world was still new—pale lightning, the first rainstorm. His hands are shaking.
Aziraphale closes his eyes. Crowley fires.
***
“Hello hello hello, Mr. Crowley!”
Muriel waves to him from their perch on the spiral staircase.
“’Lo.” He slouches further into the couch.
“No wine today?” Muriel asks. They’re reading The Great Gatsby.
Crowley stopped drinking every waking moment around year three. Muriel’s grasp of time on earth is still a bit shaky and will probably remain so for the next hundred years, if they even have that long before Heaven and Hell try to blow it all up again. Crowley supposes he should start doing something about that, but he’s only just stopped drinking, so. Baby steps.
“No, not today,” he mutters. He stares at the edge of the carpet which covers up the sigil. He realizes, the moment he says it, he knows exactly what he wants to do today. “Let’s go for a drive.”
“A drive?” Muriel perks up, The Great Gatsby forgotten for a moment. They look excited. “Where are we going?”
“Have you ever seen the sea?” Crowley says, already standing.
***
Sometime after Aziraphale hands him a thermos of holy water but before Aziraphale hands him his heart on a pike, Crowley has a dream where they go hiking. This is strange because Crowley hates hiking. Reminds him too much of the Old Testament—all those mountains he trekked to tempt the carpenter’s son. To show him all the wonders of the world. All part of her Plan or whatever.
In Crowley’s dream Aziraphale loves hiking, because of course he does. He loves anything he can make a spectacle out of, anything that lets him do it the hard way, the human way—he has the backpack, the awful dried food he won’t eat and doesn’t need to, the tent, the canteen.
In the dream Crowley stops just as they reach the summit and says Angel, pass me the wine, will you? And Aziraphale says Crowley my dear boy, don’t you know you’re not supposed to bring alcohol on a hike. It dehydrates you. Crowley squints at him. What the heaven are you supposed to drink, then? Aziraphale smiles, indulgent. He’s always so indulgent. The sun is rising behind him. They’re going to miss it. You’re supposed to drink water. And Crowley says, the light so bright tears well in his eyes: Well, then. Do your thing. Water into wine, angel, but when he looks up Aziraphale is bleeding out and the sky is red, red—
***
Muriel is ecstatic about the Bentley.
“I’ve read all about automobiles,” they say proudly from the passenger’s seat. “She’s beautiful on the inside, too.”
Crowley preens. “I know,” he says, swerving around someone who was taking too long to change lanes. Muriel doesn’t even blink—Crowley appreciates that about them, although it stings a bit. Driving used to be another performance, another mildly wicked thing to bicker about. Not so anymore, he supposes.
They arrive at some cliffs. Crowley miraculously avoids driving into the sea and turns off the Bentley, stepping out.
“This is amazing!” Muriel says. They’re wearing galoshes and leg warmers, which look hand-knitted. Maggie, probably. “She did an excellent job.”
And I think you did an excellent job, he'd told Crowley, before the Beginning. That memory had come back to Crowley on the Ark, when he and the angel would watch the night sky turn silently above the deck, while Noah and his family slept below. It’s beautiful, he’d said, and turned to Crowley, and Crowley remembered. He slithered away as soon as the waters receded, angry and despairing over everything he’d once been; who he’d become.
“Yeah, well.” Crowley takes off his sunglasses and squints out over the water, the waves distant and small in the gray sunlight. “Always easily impressed, you lot.”
Muriel’s eyes are wide. “I can’t believe it,” they breathe. “Earth is wonderful. All of that is water?”
For the first time in long time, Crowley lets himself smile. He doesn’t need to worry about Muriel seeing—they’re too busy staring out at the water. “You haven’t even seen it when the sun’s properly out,” he says, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice.
“I mean, I have,” Muriel says. “Just from above, though. It’s different when—”
“—when it’s down here, isn’t it?”
They nod. “I see why you like it so much.” Crowley doesn’t tell them that they probably shouldn’t be seeing eye-to-eye with a demon. “It’s so…so big. Or it seems that way? I know it isn’t that big at all. I spent five hundred years just documenting that patch of sky there.” They gesture in the direction of where Ursa Major would be visible if it were nighttime. Then they frown, head tilted. “Why does it still seem so big?”
“Perspective, I s’pose,” Crowley says. He glances at them sideways. “You have a lot of questions.” He doesn’t know if he means it as a warning or not. It’s more of an observation, really.
Muriel blanches. “Oh.” The look of joy on their face shutters off, and for a moment Crowley feels a surge of regret so strong it overwhelms him. He hadn’t meant to make them feel ashamed.
But Muriel is stronger than they look. They shore themselves, shoulders set straighter. “I’ve heard that the Supreme Archangel is taking questions now,” they say. “He set up a—” they pronounce the words carefully, as if practiced. “Suggestion box. Any questions are welcome, he said.”
Something twists in Crowley, hard and stabbing. His smile fades, and he can't place the emotion that wells up within him. “Is that so.”
Muriel nods, glancing at him nervously, as if looking for some comfort. Crowley finds he has none to offer. “He said…he said it was only fair. He said we should be able to ask questions, even if we never get any answers.”
“I see,” Crowley says again. He stares out at the water, at the sunlight glistening off the surface like diamonds. His eyes are stinging from the wind, cold and cutting. He blinks away the salt. “Bless him.”
***
In the dream Crowley doesn’t miss. The worst iterations of the dream are when his hands don’t shake; when he’s steady. It’s as easy as breathing, which is how Crowley knows it’s all wrong, because nothing has ever been easy for him, not since the Fall. It then follows that shooting Aziraphale must be easy because he hasn’t Fallen yet; because he’s still an angel. In this version of the dream, it’s just after he realizes this that his head splits open. Light pours from his brow—cool to the touch, like water. His halo, returned.
It goes on too long. More warmth seeps away, leaving only the coldness of Heaven. Then he’s the one bleeding out, light all over the stage.
He Falls, burning again, and Aziraphale watches him. This time the gun is in his hands. Oh, Crowley, he says. He’s smiling. He’s beautiful, even as he pulls the trigger. Nothing lasts forever.
***
He’s doing better. Mostly. He gets on.
Maggie makes him leg warmers, too. Says he looks like the wind is about to blow right through him. Nina watches her while she knits them at her counter—Crowley knows that look. He sympathizes.
The four of them have formed a little group, it seems. It starts small–one day Muriel finds Aziraphale’s record player in the bookshop. Maggie starts coming over with new records to play soon after. Then Nina starts bringing over a thermos of coffee or hot chocolate or a good bottle of red, and it becomes a Thing.
They’re in the bookshop now, peering over another record from some London artist. Well, the three of them are peering; Crowley is sprawled on the couch under a tartan blanket.
“I like this one,” Nina says. “You can hear how the pandemic really shaped it—it didn’t start out that way, though. You know she had to record it in lockdown?”
“Lockdown?” Muriel asks.
Nina looks at them strangely. Maggie says patiently, “During the pandemic.”
Recognition alights. “Ah, yes. Terrible. The Black Death, was it?”
“No, not that one,” Maggie says. She doesn’t look perturbed in the slightest. “The most recent one, dove.”
“Oh,” Muriel says. They nod. “Yes, I was definitely here for that. In London. In…quarantine. Yes.”
“Of course you were,” Maggie says. Nina just looks unimpressed. The next song begins playing.
Crowley wonders how much the humans know, or if they even care. It doesn’t really matter—better to not get too attached—but they did help him out with the whole realizing feelings bit. Nina especially. Crowley owes her one, probably, for the whole meddling in their love lives thing. He doesn’t feel bad—meddling in the affairs of humans has kind of been his MO from the get-go—but he does feel indebted to them, somehow. They helped him see why he had to speak, even though it hadn’t gone well.
“What did you do during quarantine, Mr. Crowley?” Muriel asks.
“Slept,” Crowley says from the couch. He hadn’t dreamed of anything that he remembers. Probably for the best.
“The whole time?” Nina asks.
“Not all of it.” He slides deeper into the couch. “I also ate bread.”
“I didn’t know you baked,” Maggie says. She passes Muriel a cup of tea, which they eagerly accept. Gone native.
Crowley lifts a shoulder. “Don’t. Someone made it for me.”
“So it was Mr. Fell, then, was it?” Maggie says softly. She’s looking at him like that again—pity. Crowley hates it, but he knows it’s not her fault. “Haven’t you tried calling him?”
“No,” Crowley mutters.
“Why not?” Nina asks.
Crowley closes his eyes. He’s grateful that he’s kept his glasses on. “Nothing left to say.”
“But you’re still here,” Nina points out, sharp as always. Crowley quite likes her, when she isn’t poking him.
“So I am,” Crowley says.
***
In addition to discovering new music, Muriel likes: oolong tea, reading every book they can find in the shop, and visiting the coast. Crowley drives them around to see all the sights and sounds of London and then some beyond. It’s nice having someone in the passenger seat again. Muriel never complains about his driving—to them, this is probably how all Earth-dwellers drive. Crowley doesn’t even have a license.
“So what did you do, when you were an angel?” Muriel asks on another one of their outings.
“Nothing important,” Crowley says, narrowly avoiding hitting a woman with a bicycle. He wonders how Book Girl and her specky boyfriend are doing. And Adam—he must be, what, sixteen, seventeen by now? Satan, time is strange.
“Do you remember meeting the Supreme Archangel?”
“He wasn’t the Supreme Archangel then,” Crowley says. “And not really.”
“‘Not really?’” Muriel frowns. “You mean you don’t remember?” They seem put out about this, which is sweet, Crowley supposes. They’re very sweet—not a single bitchy bone in their corporation. Unlike some angels.
“Nope.” He doesn’t mention that he remembers some of it. Best not to hash it all out now. “Lost some stuff on the way down. Next thing I knew, I was in the Garden. That’s when I remember meeting him as...” He pauses. “As myself.”
“The Garden?” Muriel pales a bit, and Crowley doesn’t think it’s from their near-miss with a double-decker bus just now. “Wait, so you were—that was you?”
“The very same,” Crowley says, tired. He makes a turn so sharp Muriel nearly goes through the window. He should really tell them about seatbelts. “Still want to hang out with me?”
“I mean,” Muriel says. They right themselves and fiddle with the cuffs of their sleeves—they’ve scrapped the full-white ensemble for something a little more sensible, relatively speaking: khakis and a white button up with a little red bow tie. “The Supreme Archangel was always around you, right? And look at him now.”
“It was more me hanging around him,” Crowley says. “And anyway, you don’t have to call him that, you know. Sounds silly. Reminds me of Gabriel.”
Muriel is quiet for a moment. Crowley has a brief moment of insanity where he feels bad about not telling them about seatbelts. “Can I tell you a secret?” they finally say.
“If you must,” Crowley says. He does a surreptitious miracle while they’re distracted. They don’t notice their new seatbelt, thankfully.
“I’m really glad they gave me this position,” Muriel says.
“That’s not a secret,” Crowley says. “You told me that when we went to Heaven.”
“That’s not the secret part,” Muriel says. “I’m glad they gave me this position because…well, no one ever came to see me. It got…” They pause. “What's the word for…for when you feel empty and echoing? Like you might never speak or be happy again.”
Crowley swallows. They come to a stop just outside the little cottage. It looks much the same as it did six years ago. For all Crowley knows, it could look the same in another six thousand. “Lonely?”
Muriel nods. “Yes! That.” They smile. “But not anymore. I have you and the bookshop and Nina and Maggie and Mr. Brown and everyone else. So, thank you very much, Mr. Crowley. For being my friend.”
Crowley blinks. Muriel looks so unafraid and earnest, like the words cost them nothing. Friend.
Perhaps things really are changing up there.
“Yeah, yeah,” he manages. He clears his throat around the thing stuck in it. “Someone’s gotta make sure you get into some trouble. Otherwise there's no point in being here.”
Muriel beams. “Right.” They look out the window and see the cottage, the garden, the stone wall. “Speaking of here. Where are we?”
Lonely. Lonely. God.
It’s fine. It’s always been fine. He’s always been fine, because even when they were fighting, even when they were so angry with each other they didn’t speak for years, they would find their way back to each other. Even now, Crowley knows they’ll meet again. He doesn’t know when or how, but he knows it in the way he knows that he once built galaxies, that humans will always be surprising, that She is always watching. He doesn’t need faith, because there’s no doubt that they will see each other again. He just knows.
But he doesn’t know if they’ll be the same. What he’ll say. How they’ll move forward, if at all. As it turns out, knowing you’re in love doesn’t do a whole lot when you’ve spent six thousand years speaking around it, never touching.
“Little place called Tadfield,” Crowley says, shutting off the engine. His voice sounds wet. He’s once again grateful for his glasses. “C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”
Muriel smiles at him.
Then they notice the seatbelt. “Wait. How do I get out of the car?”
Crowley snorts and snaps his fingers.
***
In one version of the dream he’s the bullet. He rushes forward, his hands shaking. Aziraphale’s lips are soft beneath his, but his mouth stays firm. Unyielding and constant. It makes sense; Aziraphale has always been a guardian. Crowley kisses him and doesn’t know what he’s doing; neither of them do. He does it anyway.
Crowley doesn’t remember much about the meeting when they decided on gravity, but he remembers saying wouldn’t it make things easier? If one thing draws everything else to it. That way you’d never get lost. Kissing Aziraphale felt like that: like being drawn to something he never had a chance of escaping. Like he’d had no other choice.
Except it was a choice. That’s the stupid thing about all of this–even when it doesn’t feel like a choice, it still somehow is. Stupid, stupid ineffability. Stupid plans and dealers who held all the cards. Stupidest of all is him, for still playing the game knowing he was always going to lose.
He kisses Aziraphale. Aziraphale leaves, and still Crowley feels the tug.
***
Anathema Device’s specky boyfriend is now her specky husband. He and Muriel get along like a bookshop on fire, and while Anathema and Crowley retreat to the kitchen, he gives Muriel an animated tour of the garden. Crowley watches them from the cottage windows and leans against the island, chin propped up in his hand. Anathema pours him a cup of tea and places it next to him before he can decline.
“You’re a Tadfield resident now, are you?” Crowley asks.
“You’ve read the newspapers,” she answers. “This is the best town in England.” She stirs honey into her mug and places the spoon on a little plate. “And someone needs to keep an eye on the ley lines. We’re happy here.”
Crowley takes the spoon and sticks it in his mouth. He speaks around the sweetness and ignores her look of consternation. “And Adam?”
“Gone to boarding school in America, actually,” Anathema says. She yanks the spoon out of his mouth and places it in the sink. “He’ll be back this Christmas. You and your friend should visit then.” She looks out the window, as if looking for Aziraphale, when clearly only Crowley and Muriel showed up. “Where is he, by the way?”
The honey's not bad. Maybe he should take up beekeeping. “He’s away. Working.”
Anathema looks at him; really looks at him. The women in Crowley’s most recent life have a tendency to keep doing that. “And you?”
“I’m here. Not working,” Crowley says pleasantly. “Enjoying my time with you and your specky husband.”
“Hm.” She takes a sip of her tea. “Bad, was it?”
“Awful,” he says. They say nothing more on the subject, and Crowley is grateful. Instead she talks about how everything shifted after Adam put it all back together—not just the ley lines, but auras and some of the constellations and even the tides. She puts her cup down and starts pulling out maps, laying them all out on the kitchen island and pointing out where new paths of energy have opened up; how the earth and the moon are differently aligned, how the tides now ebb and flow.
“I helped build that one.” Crowley jerks his head in the direction of one of the star maps. The Horsehead Nebula.
Anathema looks stricken. “Seriously? Okay,” she says, and pulls out a second pen and a notebook. “Tell me everything.” And they talk until Muriel and Newt come in, Newt with an invitation to stay for dinner and Muriel with an armful of snap peas.
Crowley decides he’ll visit this Christmas. No plans, anyway. He knows it’s best not to get too attached, but he’s had thousands of years of practice by now. It all fades with time—perhaps even this will, too.
***
He starts a YouTube playlist with beekeeping videos. The hobby YouTube playlist is one of his finest–gives people all the ceremony of starting a new hobby without actually doing it. Maybe he'll ask Nina where she gets her honey for her coffeeshop, see what the competitors are up to.
***
In one dream they’re on a picnic. They’re sitting beneath a tree near a cottage. Crowley can hear the sea; his head is in Aziraphale’s lap.
“My dear,” Aziraphale says. He’s reading a book of poems. Pablo Neruda. Nice fellow. “What were you thinking for dinner?”
Crowley feels Aziraphale’s hand passing through his hair. Sunlight dapples his face, illuminates his eyes and the tips of his curls. “Did you have anything in mind?” He doesn’t know it’s a dream yet. He closes his eyes.
“I was thinking of trying that new Thai place,” Aziraphale says.
“Sounds good to me, angel.” A few more moments pass like this—Aziraphale’s hand in his hair, the smell of salt, the rustle of the leaves above. It’s nice. Peaceful.
“Aziraphale.” This is odd, because he never calls Aziraphale Aziraphale. Not unless it’s urgent. He hasn’t spoken his name in years now.
“Yes, darling?”
This is when he realizes. Now he only says his name in dreams. “How have you been?”
Crowley hears him put down his book. He keeps his eyes closed, because he knows the dream is over when he opens them.
“My dear, what are you saying?” Aziraphale asks. “I’m right here.”
Crowley wakes up crying. “I missed you,” he says to his empty flat.
***
Their next item on Crowley’s plan to introduce Muriel to the wonders of Earth is a trip to St. James’s park to feed the ducks. But first, they go to Tesco to buy frozen peas.
“I would like to purchase this package of frozen vegetables, if you please,” Muriel says to the self-checkout kiosk.
“You have to scan it,” Crowley says from where he’s miracling all of the plastic bags stuck together. If it also happens to encourage people to bring their own, more sustainable canvas bags, then so be it. “Hold it over the glass thingy.”
Muriel does, and it immediately starts screaming for an associate, because oh, right—Crowley invented these, too. Whoops.
“That was amazing!” Muriel says, once they’ve wrangled their purchases and exited the store. “There were so many different types of everything. I used to document these things up there, but it’s different when you actually get to see and, and touch everything.”
“Yeah, well,” Crowley says. “Humans like variety. Clever, they are.” His voice goes soft, though he would never admit it. “Always asking what’s possible.” He reaches into the one plastic bag he didn’t stick and takes out an apple. He’d seen Muriel eyeing them.
“Want one?” he asks, offering it to them as they walk towards the park.
“Oh, I…” Muriel’s radiant smile dims a bit. “I’ve never…well, I’ve never ingested gross matter other than tea.”
“Just try it,” Crowley says, tossing it to them. “They’re good for you. You know humans have a saying for this, too? ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’”
“That’s ridiculous,” Muriel says, looking at it doubtfully.
“Humans are ridiculous,” Crowley says, nodding. He takes a bite and chews—not bad. Could be a little more sour, but he did get one of the Fuji ones.
Muriel takes a bite. They chew slowly.
Their eyes widen, a new light behind their eyes. They take another bite.
Crowley smiles. Maybe he really has changed, because it doesn’t even feel like a temptation. It feels like what it is: sharing a snack with a friend.
They walk back to the Bentley together, crunching away.
***
When he wakes up from the dreams that aren’t nightmares–the ones where he and Aziraphale have a house together–he’s never angry, only sad. It somehow hurts more.
***
“The world’s coming to an end again soon,” he tells the ducks at St. James’s park. Muriel is preoccupied with the same pond as one of the Interpol agents a little ways away. “I saw it in Heaven. They’re going to try again.”
He tosses another handful of frozen peas at them. They quack appreciatively. “Maybe he can actually convince them not to,” he says. “But probably not.”
He throws the last few peas into the water, where they sink like stones. “They’re going to break his heart up there,” he says. This realization is not as awful as the next: “I probably broke his heart, too.”
The ducks dive for more peas.
***
The dream beneath the tree is almost worse than the nightmare where he shoots Aziraphale in the head. At least with the nightmares he doesn’t wake up with that awful ache in his chest. Lonely.
He’s back here again, except he’s not lying beneath the tree with his head in Aziraphale’s lap—now they’re both standing beside it.
There are apples on its branches now, full and red and ripe. Aziraphale reaches up and plucks one, the branch bending to meet him as he tugs it. It snaps off quietly, the snick of it clean and definite.
He puts it in a basket that hangs from his arm. He’s wearing a straw sunhat and a pair of overalls that Crowley has never seen before. “Would you like one, Crowley?” he asks. “We might have to give a few to the neighbors so as not to waste—there are so many this year, aren’t there?”
Crowley stares at him dumbly. It’s late afternoon, and the sun is turning the world gold. “I—yes?”
“Splendid. Maybe you can eat a few and we can save the rest for the pie.” He snaps another off, examines it, then tsks. “Not this one…perhaps this one? Ah, yes. No bruises, thank goodness.” He snaps off another apple and rubs it on his sleeve until it shines.
“Here you are, dear,” he says, offering it to Crowley.
“Bit on the nose, don’t you think?” Crowley takes it. In the dream the endearment feels familiar. He lets himself be washed away by the warmth of it–the molten sun, Aziraphale’s smile. Just a moment can’t hurt. “This is my job, you know. Temptation. Making people want more than what they have.”
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale says, in that same voice as when he said nothing lasts forever. “You’ve always had me.”
In the dream the apple doesn’t taste like anything.
***
Sometimes he just gets so fucking angry. He counts to ten and takes deep breaths, tries going for walks and blasting music from his surround sound speakers (another invention of his—specifically the kind loud enough to carry sound through an apartment wall), but to no avail. Anger feels like powerlessness, like nowhere to go but inward, so he stews.
He keeps away from the bookshop and people in general when he’s really angry, because he doesn’t know what he’ll say. It wouldn’t be fair—it’s not their fault.
Instead, he rearranges the furniture in his apartment by hand, no miracles: pushes the couch from the center of the room to a corner, moves his desk to the room where his plants used to be; moves his plants to where his desk used to be. And so on and so forth until he’s sweating and panting and aching and—once he gets into the wine—drunk. It’s too sweet for his liking, but by the time he makes it to the ceiling he’s too far gone to care.
“It’s not fucking fair,” he says to Lisa. He’s lying on the ceiling now, arms and legs spread apart. The bottle is in one hand. His tie hangs down towards the floor. “Stupid, innit? I of all people should know that none of this is fair.” He covers his eyes with one arm. “We had a good thing going. Six thousand years it took us, but we were getting somewhere. Stupid angels on their stupid high horses. So much holier than the rest of us assholes—what do they know, huh? Fucking nothing. That’s why She keeps ’em around—they’re too scared to ask the real questions. Stupid toxic cult, the lot of ’em.”
The Mona Lisa, predictably, says nothing. Crowley wonders if he should sober up before he does something really stupid, like pray to Her—or to the new Supreme Archangel, even. Surely he’s getting loads of prayers now that he’s a bigshot. He probably wouldn’t even notice.
What would he even say? He takes a swig of the wine and misses; it dribbles down his chin and then to the floor. Probably something like Dear Angel, how’s it going up there you idiot? I hate you I can’t believe you left well actually yes I can believe it because you’re always leaving aren’t you you silly silly angel God I miss you I miss you I miss you—
He drops the bottle of wine; it falls to the floor and shatters, red and glass everywhere.
“Nah,” he mutters. “Nah, not that. Can’t have him actually hearing this. ’D be so embarrassing.”
He curls up in a ball. His face is still wet. It tastes salty, not sweet at all.
***
In the dream they’re in a kitchen Crowley doesn’t recognize. It’s early in the morning, bright white light streaming through the windows onto the tile floor. Aziraphale is wearing tartan pajamas and a bathrobe.
“I thought you didn’t sleep,” Crowley says. There’s a pie in the oven; he can smell it. Peach. The kitchen has stone walls and is lined by windows with bright yellow curtains thrown open to let in the light. Crowley is wearing a floral apron.
“It’s still nice to get dressed for the occasion,” Aziraphale says. He’s sitting at the kitchen table with his glasses on, peering over a crossword. “And you sleep, dear.” He sniffs, ever a bastard. “I’m just—how do you say?—along for the ride.”
“Why are you even here?” Crowley says, pinching his brow. “I thought you were, you know.” He waves a hand up. “Trying to reform Heaven, or whatever.”
“You and I both know that that was a futile endeavor from the start,” Aziraphale says. Crowley gapes at him. “I was foolish to not see it.” He suddenly looks remorseful, his eyes sad. “And I hurt you terribly.”
“Is this an apology?” Crowley asks.
“I can certainly apologize again,” Aziraphale says, standing. He looks beautiful like this—in his ridiculous pajamas, the collar open at his soft throat. He begins to kneel, his head bowed in penance. It all feels so strange—this shouldn’t feel real, shouldn’t hurt this much. It does. “Will you—?”
“Stop,” Crowley croaks, and that’s how he wakes up, curled up on his ceiling with a raging hangover and the light through his apartment windows blinding him, his cheeks still wet. It hurts worse than anything, anything.
***
After that dream he feels unmoored, distant. It happens very suddenly and very soon after—he’s talking with Muriel and Maggie about something—what he doesn’t actually remember—and Nina joins them and says something funny, and he turns to this right to exchange a glance, a can you believe this?, and—
Muriel smiles at him instead. “Mr. Crowley?” they ask, their smile rapidly fading.
He just stares at the empty space above their shoulder, at the dust motes. Where the furniture isn’t. It takes him a moment to realize his shoulders are shaking.
“Oh dear,” Maggie says. “Why don’t we get you a blanket?”
Crowley lets himself be steered to the couch and sat down. At some point a cup of hot cocoa is placed in his hands and he loses it again. He can’t stop shaking—full bodied movements so violent they have to take the hot cocoa away for a moment—and he—he—
He’s gone. He’s gone and Crowley can’t protect him up there, can’t do anything, can’t say anything, can’t go to him. Fuck, it hurts so bad. Fucking fuck. He twists his hands in the blanket and holds on for dear life, focuses on one corner—there. His desk, his glasses, unfolded atop of a copy of Richard III. He didn’t bring them to Heaven—makes sense, corporations were perfect in Heaven, no astigmatism. He asked him once why he didn’t just miracle himself perfect vision. He said it had all been part of the experience. Always the experience with him. Crowley understood what he meant though, which was the worst part. God—the name burns—he doesn’t know what to do with this, this awful feeling. I forgive you. He’s so, so tired. He doesn’t know how humans stand it, how anyone stands it. It’s awful, it’s so awful, it makes him want to—to—
“Look at me, love. Breathe with me. Can you do that for me?” Maggie’s voice cuts through. He fumbles blindly for something, anything, his chest heaving. He finds her hands on his shoulders. “In with me, okay? Now out. In. Out.”
He follows her voice. In, Out. In. Out.
“That’s it,” Maggie says, her voice encouraging. “Deep breaths. That’s it. One more time, okay? In…and now out…”
His vision begins to clear—the world expands slowly from the glasses, the battered copy of Shakespeare, the desk.
He breathes. He breathes.
“Sorry,” he eventually croaks. Muriel and Nina are watching worriedly from over Maggie’s shoulder. “Bad time.”
“It’s okay,” Nina says, and she looks a bit uncomfortable; it’s her discomfort that gets Crowley to fully return to himself. “We’ve all been there. What was it?”
“’S stupid,” he mumbles. Muriel looks so anxious; he flashes them a smile that’s probably more of a grimace. They hand him back the hot chocolate, which is sweet. They’re all so sweet. “Just a weird…thing. Nothing you guys need to worry about.”
“I think we get to worry just a little,” Maggie says, stepping back. “You’re our friend.”
It’s been a while since Crowley let himself have a friend. Especially a human one. He remembers his promise to himself, to be better.
“…Thanks,” he mutters, then takes a sip. Like he expected—sweet. But it’s not bad. “’S nice to have a friend.”
Nina and Maggie exchange a glance. That hurts too—that easy intimacy. Natural as breathing. Crowley wraps his hands around his mug and lets the warmth seep in.
***
“Is this about the Supreme—I mean. Aziraphale?”
Muriel is alphabetizing the books again, properly this time. It’s an enormous feat, with the number of books in the shop; Crowley doesn’t envy them, although they seem to like it well enough.
Crowley considers lying. Lying can be fun—can make things interesting, can make people say things they normally wouldn’t say. Can get you a commendation.
He thinks, for the time being, he is very tired of lying.
“Yeah,” he says, under the tartan blanket on the sagging couch in the back of the bookshop. “He’s…” He swallows. “He’s an idiot,” he says softly.
“Because he left?” Muriel ventures. They seem genuinely curious about it—not for Crowley’s well-being exactly, although that certainly seems to be a part of it—but also because they actually want to know. It’s soothing, in an odd way, to be an object of curiosity and not pity. Maybe that’s why Crowley doesn’t mind answering.
“Yeah,” Crowley says. “I thought maybe we could. You know. Go off together. Like Gabriel and Beezelbub did.” He sinks further into the couch. “But I should’ve known. He’s always been…very set in his ways. He sees things one way and doesn’t move much.”
“So he’s…” Muriel roots around for the word. “Stubborn.”
“Yeah,” Crowley mumbles. “So stubborn.” It almost sounds fond, and that’s when it begins.
***
Time passes. Fall comes and brings with it a chill that snakes it way up their ankles every time the bookshop doors open. Crowley gets drinks with Nina, goes on drives with Muriel, knits a pair of socks with Maggie. He finally buys a bed, a proper one–with four posters and a starry canopy, ridiculously expensive. He puts his bedroom back together and puts the bed next to the window.
He sleeps.
***
“Do you want to know one of those prophecies in that book you burned?” Crowley says to Anathema one brisk evening in October, over the edge of the couch to where she sits at her and Newt’s kitchen table. She’s marking up something in her notebook again while Newt and Muriel grab takeaway from the local Tadfield pub. They’re watching reruns of Friends tonight, because Anathema misses America, and Crowley considers any binge viewing of Friends a win in Hell’s book. Not that anyone is keeping track anymore.
Anathema shoots him a look. “If I’d wanted to know, I wouldn’t have burned it,” she says, but she’s curious. Crowley is very good at getting people curious.
“You don't want to know, not even a little bit?” Crowley asks, taking another sip of wine. It’s good stuff—he’d found it in his apartment after he’d gotten it back. He’s not sure where it came from—it definitely wasn’t Shax’s. “Because I know.”
Anathema looks at him again; really looks at him. His glasses are still on; he’s sprawled on the couch, rolling the wineglass stem between his fingers, the very picture of lazy comfort. He knows he’s not fooling her.
“You know,” she says slowly. “I don't think I do.”
“That’s okay,” he tells her. He offers her a toast, and outside the window, over the sound of the canned laughter from the TV, the wind blows strong. Newt and Muriel pull up in the driveway. Even now, the world turns on. He can feel it, breathless and whirling. “I have a plan.”
***
“I understand why you had to go,” he tells Aziraphale in the dream. This time they’re sitting in the garden of the cottage Crowley is coming to understand as theirs. He doesn’t know how he knows this. “But I still wish you hadn’t.”
“Your understanding is more than what I deserve, my dear,” Aziraphale says. He has a tartan blanket in his lap. It feels soft beneath his cheek, and warm. Aziraphale runs his hand through Crowley’s hair, and Crowley shivers. “I confess I didn’t understand your position until it was much, much too late.”
“’S okay,” Crowley mumbles, his eyes closing. It feels so nice. “I forgave you a long time ago.”
Aziraphale hums. His hand traces the snake on Crowley’s face. “You do know how much I love you, don’t you?” he says, and his voice sounds so shaken that Crowley immediately sits up.
The night sky is full of stars, but even without the light, Crowley has always been very good at seeing in the dark. “I do,” he says seriously. “Angel, I do.”
“Well,” Aziraphale says, sniffling. He dabs at his eyes. “Still. I should like to keep reminding you.” He cups Crowley’s cheek. “Would…would that be alright?”
“I can work with that,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale makes another wet noise, a laugh and a sob, the most beautiful sound in the world. Crowley holds his hand and wakes up, for the last time, crying.
***
The Second Coming arrives in Spring, on Easter. Crowley has a plan. This time, he’s ready.
But before that—before the last dregs of winter melt away; before the Christmas lights on Whickber Street are finally taken down (“they’re New Years lights now,” Mr. Brown says, with an air of disgust normally reserved for rat infestations); before Muriel finishes alphabetizing the bookshop by author first name; before Nina and Maggie get engaged; before Anathema and Newt announce they’re expecting; before Adam goes back to uni for the spring term—before all of that, sunlight pale and dreamlike breaks through the windows of the bookshop after weeks of snow. The bell above the door chimes.
“We’re closed,” Crowley calls out from behind one of the shelves. He’s contemplating rearranging all of the books in alphabetical order by the last sentence; he thinks he might be able to convince Muriel that that’s how it’s done here. Old habits, and it'd ward off customers, plus it would be very, very funny. Wins all around, really. “And no, we don’t take online orders, I don’t know who started that rumor—” (in all honesty it might’ve been him, when he was very drunk and very angry a few months ago, but he’s dealing with it, isn’t he? He’s dealing) “—so can’t help you there.”
“Actually,” says the not-customer, “I was rather hoping that you might be open.”
Crowley freezes. Slowly, he peers around the shelf.
His eyes are ringed with an alien purple; gone are his cream waistcoat and gold chain, replaced with a bright white-and-gray suit that doesn't fit him at all. Crowley can sense his power like sparks, stinging and dangerous. His skin prickles.
Still, he would know him anywhere.
“Hello, Crowley,” Aziraphale says.
Before they really, actually talk; before an angel begs a demon for forgiveness; before an angel kidnaps the infant Christ; before the Second Coming; before the kitchen and the tree and the garden in the South Downs, Aziraphale stands at the doorway to the bookshop that had once been his, his hands behind his back. He brings the end of winter, and his face is lit and pale.
He looks, as he always is, beautiful.
“We’re still closed,” Crowley says. He sets the book on the shelf; he knows he’s finally done dreaming. At least for now. “But come in.”
***
(Quite some time later, they lie together beneath the apple tree, in the garden.
“Hello, love,” Aziraphale murmurs. His fingers are soft where they brush his cheek. “You were having quite a nap. Shall we head inside?”
Crowley turns his head into Aziraphale’s shoulder and shakes his head. “In a moment. ’Lil longer, angel.”
“Certainly,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley closes his eyes and breathes, finally awake).