Work Text:
“Muriel, be a dear and take the kettle off.” Crowley was trying to shuffle through books in the backroom. He adored Aziraphale, but this place was a mess. There were things shoved everywhere and then Gabriel had gotten a hold of it and just when he thought he had fixed what Jim broke, he found another stack of seemingly random books. Was there a relationship between Vanity Fair and The Talented Mr Ripley? Why did The Letters of Abelard and Heloise ( both lovely people, too bad about what happened to them) on top of Great Expectations? He was so confused and, of course, his Angel was not here to ask…. No, he thought. Not my angel. No idea why I ever called him that, just some angel I knew. Crowley exhaled all of his breath. Nina said they needed to change. His therapist said he was worthy, even of love. Could they both be right? Maybe his was mine, but I was never his? Or, maybe I was his, but he was never really mine.
The kettle was still going off. “Muriel, deaaaarrr?” he said louder.
“Sorry! Got it!” He heard them cry out from the other side of the store. Crowley shook his head to clear his thoughts and picked up a few more books. Underneath was a box. This seemed just like Aziraphale- how long had this been here? Did he even remember it was here? Squatting down, he whipped off the dust that had fallen around the books he had just removed and opened a flap. Inside there were… journals, maybe? They were of the same size, shape, and color; the same, like they had all been bought together years ago.
He had seen one or two of them somewhere else, around on a stack here and a shelf there, but hadn’t opened them. He took one from the top and saw Aziraphale’s delicate handwriting. There were dates on this one, 1993-2007. Crowley pushed a few books out of the way and sat. This seemed oddly recent to be buried so deeply under that many books. Books that looked like they had been there for decades.
“Do you want any hot chocolate?” Muriel exclaimed from the stove, in their highest voice.
“No thank you,” Crowley responded. They were so darling and so very new, he thought. And a part of him ached because he remembered another angel who had that much happiness, who used to ask him if he wanted hot chocolate. Having them here was both a comfort and an ache. Maybe the best way to start to heal, whatever that really was. He rotated the book in his hand and opened it. It was a sketchbook.
A hand.
A tree and an empty bench.
The same hand from a different angle.
The hand again, now out offering itself to something or someone.
The leg of the bench in great detail, with grass around it.
The hand hanging relaxed.
The branch of, what he assumed was the same tree.
The hand on the bench.
From another angle.
And from another.
Hanging off the bench.
Crowley’s watch on the wrist of the hand.
Crowley’s hand, his wrist resting on his thigh.
Crowley’s hand on a different part of the bench.
Crowley’s hand dangling off the bench.
The tree by the bench that they sit on in Saint James's Park.
Crowley’s hand holding a wine glass.
Crowley’s hand holding on to Aziraphale’s chair.
Crowley’s hand resting on the table a few feet away.
One of Crowley’s eyes. This is the one that stopped him. The others were deniable; meditations on the same object, no different than a still life with fruit. They were just ‘a hand’. But this one was different. There were creases in the corners of these eyes. This was not him mad, or aloof or negligent, or a million other expressions that he tried so hard to keep on his face- the mask a demon must wear. This was him content. This was him satisfied, comfortable. This was the him that only Aziraphale saw and no one, no one else.
He hadn’t meant to be crying when Muriel walked up. He was flipping through a book titled 1937-1952 full of Crowleys being funny, sleeping on the sofa, and feeding ducks. Crowleys drinking wine and looking off into the distance when he thought no one was looking.
“Oh, are you alright?”
“Yeah,” he sniffed, not closing the book, not trying to hide.
“I didn’t hear what you said, so I brought you some hot chocolate- Oh! That’s you!”
“Yeah,” he managed, whipping his nose before taking the hot chocolate. Muriel moved some books away and joined him on the floor.
“I’ve seen another book like that! It is full of you. And some food…” And at that, Crowley had to laugh. Because his Angel sure did love food. “How many of them are there?”
“Oh, I don’t know, seems to be about twenty here?” and he unboxed the books as if he were unboxing years of their lives. And as they flipped through them, they saw all sorts of Crowleys- talking with Atilla, singing with Mick Jagger, listening to Cicero, reading poetry to Byron. But every once and a while, there were other Crowleys. Alone, quietly pouring wine. Looking out of a window. Picking something from under his nails. Hundreds and hundreds of him, in every incarnation of their several thousand years.
Then there was the first Crowley. In the first book. When he was not even yet a Crowley. Where he had no yellow eyes or tattoos. Just of his face looking out across the universe with joy and wonder, with excitement and happiness, with pure…. Love. Love. And his heart broke and broke and broke. He had never seen himself this way and could not remember this version of him. This is who Aziraphale saw. Not him “THE ANGEL”, because there were books of every piece of him since, of him that he didn’t even know he showed, of him unedited in full detail down to the moles on his hand that only his Angel saw. But this was of a joy and a love that was lost, stolen from him, but not unreal. Not unnoticed. And while Heaven ended this version of him, it had been witnessed by Azriphale’s eyes and recorded by his hands. And for all his denial to protect himself (and his Angel), it had been real. What Heaven stole from him, Aziraphale saved for him in his memory.
And while Crowley was too far from that version, too hurt and damaged, Aziraphale kept that wonder, that love that joy, not just here in the sketch pad, not to himself, or just for mankind, but… for him. That innocence was taken from Crowley but in a turn of events it was given back to him in Aziraphale. And he had fought long to protect Aziraphale from being robbed of that joy, of that love. Never once realizing that he once felt the love that Aziraphale did and that he was capable of feeling that again. Never once considering that there was this whole, other love and joy that existed that has nothing to do with Heaven or Hell, or with being ‘an angel’, but being them. And instead of being bitter about what happened, something he could not change, he should be happy for what did happen, and that was a love that could not fall. A love that had existed far before he had put a name to it. A love that he wanted and needed and just maybe, deserved. A love that could never be taken away from him, even if his angel was a whole galaxy away.
“Oh, you seem so happy here! Not as grice as you usually do.” Crowley tried hard through his tears to not shoot them a look that affirmed the griceness and probably failed.
“Sometimes you seem like you are so close to being happy, like when you were around Aziraphale, well, before he,...went on vacation. But it's like you can’t be. I thought you might not know how.”
“I used to know, but that was a very long time ago. And things changed.”
Muriel stood up confused. “Heaven never seems to change, but Earth does all the time. Nothing stays the same but it always seems to become something amazing and new and different.”
“But sometimes bad,” Crowley mourned, standing and sipping on his hot chocolate.
“But sometimes better! Birds die, but new ones are born every day and learn to sing and fly! It’s what makes it so amazingly different and never the same.”
“New ones are born every day…” said Crowley and he thought of particular birds not very far from here.