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He’s been waiting for millennia. His heart has broken and healed and broken again, and again, and again- calcified with the grief, barely beating. Marble and limestone chips off with every beat, only for more to take its place. A cycle too fast even for the original speed demon to escape. He’d always been an optimist, the dribbles of hope breaking through every few decades enough to keep it running. A brush of fingertips here, a shared moment on a rooftop there- something would come out of it eventually. He just had to keep waiting.
He drives far, fast, and most importantly, away, hoping the distance he puts between them will be enough to close the hairline cracks forming through his very soul. The splinters chip off and lie behind in his wake- a trail of breadcrumbs for the angel to follow. Perhaps it could wear down to nothing at all. Perhaps something new would grow to replace it. Perhaps a gaping void would remain, swallowing whatever else rattled around inside him (It’s alright. He didn’t actually need those organs.)
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But he was being over dramatic. He could handle rejection. It was one of his specialties- and by Someone, was it a skill he’d needed. Of course, your definition of “handle” would have to include sleeping for a century and drowning your sorrows in enough alcohol to kill an elephant- but that was just semantics. No need to kick up a fuss, really. Really!
His knuckles grow bone-white, fingers gripped onto the steering wheel like a lifebuoy. It was the right shape, after all. Though maybe not buoyant enough. And he’d rather cut his own heart out than drive his Bentley into the ocean- but he didn’t exactly need any initiative to play surgeon. Not anymore.
He drives erratically- or at least, more erratically than usual. He takes hairpin turns with little care for whether the Bentley makes it the right way up (It will. It always will.). The surroundings blur into one grey blur. And then another grey blur. It’s London- everything’s grey. He has no destination in mind. All his usual haunts remind him of what he’s lost (who he’s lost). He’d shared too much of his life with the angel, and he had crept his way into every single nook and cranny of it. Sunlight warming him from the inside out.
Or a cancer silently growing inside him, strangling his body until it was too late.
No. No! What was he thinking?
He shakes his head, taking his hands off the wheel to rub his temples. Bless it, he was too rattled to keep driving. The Bentley drives to the side of the road and parks itself (illegally, of course). Crowley stares fixedly ahead, lost in the jumble of his inner monologue. A destroyed cityscape of good memories, what were once the only things to keep him going when Hell sunk its claws into him particularly deep. Tainted by a mere 5 minutes with the angel.
God, he’d been stupid. He’d been so, so stupid.
What had he been thinking, listening to the humans? What could they know of a relationship older than Creation itself? What advice could they give, that wasn’t corrupted by their limited perspective?
He’d always moved too fast. The rushing rapids to Aziraphale’s steady stone (Would it be mossy? ‘Course it would. Soft like him.). All he’d wanted was to carry the stone away with him- but maybe he’d been wearing him down over the millennia. Dancing too close to the thin line separating the inevitable Before and After- Before he ruined everything, and After he got left behind like just another wine bottle.
Drink and discard.
He blearily wonders what that aggravating honking noise is, only to realise that it was from the Bentley. Maybe slumping over the steering wheel wasn’t a very good idea. He sits up, taking off his glasses so he can rub at his eyes.
Wet. Of course they are.
“Traitors, the lot of you. Bloody useless,” He curses (blesses?), jamming the glasses back on. It’s only now he looks around.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
The heavy oak door of the bookshop remains solidly shut, cryptic Closed sign present as always. It almost seems as if nothing has changed- if it weren’t for the angel puttering about inside. But not the angel.
Warm light spills out of the windows. He thinks they look like they’re grinning at him, gap-toothed and mocking.
Stay out.
Nothing lasts forever, does it.
They’d had a good run. The bookshop had survived an inferno, the Blitz and countless nights of a drunk angel and a drunker demon causing chaos. It would survive this as well.
Crowley wasn’t needed here anymore. He puts the Bentley into reverse and pulls out from the bookshop, leaving too fast to notice Muriel’s excited wave.
He takes off, The Beatles’ “I Want to Break Free” underscoring every tick of the speedometer. 100. 200. Miles or Kilometres, or some new system devised entirely by the Bentley. Who knows? Not Crowley, that’s for sure. He just wants to get away.
He drives and drives, taking random turns. His journey is practically set to a roll of a dice. Right. Left. Right again. Another right.
After what seems like hours (and what was actually days), he slows to a stop. Panting, he rolls down the window.
And swears.
The bookshop is there. Of course the bookshop is there.
He wastes no time gaping this time around. The Bentley is thrown back into top speed- geriatric of a sound barrier left behind in the dust. Crowley grows frantic, veering off the road and onto the sidewalk (No one is hurt. Of course no one is hurt.). Pedestrians scatter left and right, but Crowley plows on. At some point, he veers through some storefronts- broken walls and destroyed wares righting themselves in his wake with a rumble and a clatter.
He closes his eyes as he slows down, sending a silent prayer to whomever will listen. What did he have left to lose, anyways? Eyes still closed, he pulls over. He doesn’t hit anything, of course- no miracles involved, he’s just that good.
But somehow, despite being “that good”, he’s ended up right where he started. The starry sky above rings the bookshop like a halo, warm firelight beckoning invitingly. It would be so easy to go inside. So very easy. He’d passed countless such nights pulling up to this very spot, the tantalising promise of a good time leading him in. Temptation for the tempter, and so much sweeter for it.
If he were a slightly weaker demon, he’d find himself weeping into the bookshelves (and then the couch, and then the fireplace, and then the antique horse statue) in a heartbeat. But he wasn’t that weak. And also couldn’t stand Muriel watching him have his mental breakdown.
Lord, he just wanted a quiet place to scream in. And a few conveniently placed rocks to throw off a conveniently placed cliff into a conveniently placed ocean. And maybe swan dive into that ocean as well (He would never hit the water- but it’s the principle of the matter).
He pulls out. Drives for a bit. Slows down.
The bookshop.
He pulls out. Drives for hours. Slows down.
The bookshop.
He pulls out. Drives for days. Slows down.
The bookshop.
The cycle repeats, and repeats, and repeats, with no change. Crowley’s ditched his glasses long ago- they’ve been melted into a gooey mess and chucked onto the backseat. The force of his glare, the sheer speeds the Bentley is reaching, glasses self-destructing out of fear- your pick. Maybe it’s all three.
I’m losing my mind. I’ve well and truly lost it.
Is this a cruel joke, whose punchline only She knows? She’s probably laughing at him at this very moment. Giggling as She shoves Her Ineffable chess pieces across the Ineffable chess board.
Well, She can shove it up Her Ineffable- no. He’s not risking that thought. No matter how royally pissed off he is.
He’d never been a quitter. And it’s not like he’d anything better to be doing.
He keeps a foot on the accelerator, and tries something new. He keeps the Bentley on a straight line. Obviously, pesky things like “walls” and “human beings” don’t stop him (Again, no one gets hurt. He may be a demon, but he’s not a monster.). He plows on, grinning despite himself. There’s no way he could end up back where he came from. Absolutely no way.
He ends up back where he came from.
Fuck. Again.
He could never hurt the Bentley- but he is a hair’s breadth away from losing it and devolving into a full on screaming, kicking meltdown. To satisfy himself, he gives one good slap to the dashboard.
“I may be right, I may be wrong, but I’m perfectly willing to swear,” croons a voice out of the Bentley’s state of the art sound systems. A sound system that will shortly find itself 5 miles underwater, or so help him.
Crowley turns the stereo off with a slam and a cry.
“I will turn you into scrap metal and feed you to a goat,” He mutters under his breath, hands fisted in his hair.
His heart lies broken on the sidewalk, but the blood always flows back to his Sun.
Blasted gravity. Blasted love. One and the same, weren’t they. Impossible to avoid, too powerful for its own good, and sends you stumbling on your feet and faceplanting into the tarmac.
He can’t blame the Bentley. It was tuned to his thoughts and had always given him exactly what he needed. What he wanted was another story- the Bentley had watched him trip and fall further than he thought was possible over the past century, and was sick of it. She was done with his bumbling around, and would not help him run away for the umpteenth time.
This was what he needed. The Bentley’s wheels seemed rooted to the ground- maybe now he’d get the message. He presses the accelerator as far down as it can go, and then some- no dice. The Bentley protests with an angry grate of metal and a spray of sparks.
Fine.
Fine.
He’ll just walk. He gets out of the Bentley, closing the door a bit harder than necessary. He pointedly keeps the bookshop out of his eye line.
No, he isn’t flicking his eyes over every few seconds. He isn’t hoping against hope that a familiar head of curls pops up in the window. He isn’t. You can’t prove it.
He saunters down the sidewalk, the sea of passers-by parting around the scary angry man. (Where was his nice friend anyways?)
He rounds the corner, heart pounding a frenzied staccato, half-expecting the bookshop to loom in the horizon.
The bookshop is not there.
He breathes a sigh of relief- but it’s tinged with a hint of regret.
Okay, a lot of regret.
He stops. Where could he go, anyways? Where did he have left? His flat was occupied. Hell could find him and drag him back, kicking and screaming, no matter where he went.
Someone help him.
He sighs again, and saunters back. He stops across the bookshop, and gazes in, one hand resting on the Bentley. Oh so similar to how he stood what feels like an eternity ago.
“You can’t leave this bookshop.”
Had he been talking to Aziraphale, or himself? The bookshop had been the center of his little universe for so long that he could hardly remember a time where he didn’t find himself held in its warm, homey interior on a bad night. The scent of old books and the crackling fire putting him at ease, curled into an armchair. The comforting presence of the angel puttering about by his side, or tucked into a neighbouring armchair, lost in a book. Dust motes swirling in the light, and, despite himself, a smile on his face as he drifts off to sleep.
Fuck, it seems like a million years ago.
He can see Muriel jump up and down, waving excitedly. He can see a fire crackling in the hearth. He can see the gramophone a-spin.
He can see himself, back where he belongs.
Crowley walks over, and opens the bookshop door.
He’s been waiting for millennia. And he’ll wait for millennia more.