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By all accounts it was a nice day. All accounts, except of course the demon Crowley's. In Crowley's eyes, it was a dreadful day, perhaps one of his worst.
He had been saying this for weeks now, every time Muriel tried to make amiable conversation. Crowley didn't like amiable conversation. He especially didn't like amiable conversation when the person trying to amiably converse wasn't very good at it. This wasn't Muriel's fault, they were new to earth, still learning the ropes.
Crowley wasn't unhappy to answer Muriel's questions (though there were quite a lot of them), it served as a satisfying distraction from the feeling. The feeling, that sinking feeling that Crowley couldn't escape.
Muriel had taken the liberty of doing some research, and had said Crowley was experiencing something that humans called 'Depression'. Of course Crowley had heard of depression, but that was something humans had, something that couldn't touch him.
Still, the demon felt dejected. Sorrowful. Hopeless. But most of all he was angry. Of course he'd never let anyone see him like that (anger exempt), wallowing in self pity. He carried on, he had to. Why he had to carry on, Crowley didn't exactly know. There was a tugging in his gut that kept him going, perhaps his last shred of optimism.
The demon's devil-may-care saunter had reduced to a slow, thoughtful pace. There were too many thoughts in his head, always. Which was a considerable amount of thoughts, given that Crowley's mind was expansive.
But despite his low spirits, the demon persisted. Or at least he thought it did. He thought he was just as cunning and funny as he was before. Nina from the coffee shop did not.
It was at the thought of coffee that Crowley managed to drag himself off of the sagging love-seat at the back of the bookshop, out the door, and across the street. Crowley had been right about the day being dreadful. The sun shone from every corner of the sky, beating down relentlessly on the demon's sensitive skin, nary a cloud in sight to offer him shade.
The jingling of the coffee shop door sounded resolutely as Crowley stepped over the threshold. Nina glanced up with a pleasant expression that immediately soured. Ah, she had been expecting Maggie. Crowley rubbed sleep from his eyes, and promptly realised he had forgotten his glasses.
"Story of my life."
He mumbled, and languidly reached up to shield his eyes with a delicate hand. A devilish smirk settled on his face, and he strolled up to the counter with effort.
"Morning Nina,"
he drawled to the coffee seller.
"It's 3 pm."
"Afternoon then. I'll have my usual."
"No."
Crowley blinked.
"No? What do you mean no? You can't just refuse me service, I'm a paying customer!" His voice was shrill as he said this, still wrought with the twinges of a nap that he assumed had lasted for about a week.
"I mean, No. You're a mess, Crowley, a proper mess. It's time you got off your arse and had a real talk with Mr. Fe-"
Crowley cut her off with a pained look in his eyes as if to shield himself from a sullen reminder that pierced his very core.
"Ngk. Nina, Nina. Could you do me a favour and just serve me coffee? I don't need your input on my personal life."
Nina scoffed at that rather loudly.
"Oh, so it's ok for you to mess about with my love life, but the moment it's about yours, you shut everyone out?"
A chill ran up Crowley's spine. Love life. Could what he had with Aziraphale be called a love life? There had been one kiss, one dreadful kiss. A kiss that had broken something in Crowley that he had buried deep down.
Noticing the demon's growing displeasure, Nina started up again.
"Look, you can either leave now or sit down and soak in the sunlight. But I'm not serving you any coffee in the state you're in."
Crowley sneered at her. It wasn't her job to call him a sad mess. It was her job to serve coffee.
"Fine. I'll seek coffee elsewhere."
It was a lie. All Crowley was going to do was storm back into the bookshop and loudly complain. In a sweeping motion and rather harsh tug of the shop door, Crowley exited the cafe in a huff. He was decidedly mumbling to himself, which was not something he did often.
"The state I'm in, what does she know about the state I'm in, I've barely left the bookshop-"
The bookshop. It had always been dimly lit, probably due to Aziraphale's thing with bright lights, but during the day in question the shop was well and truly dark. Always closed on weekends and such, Crowley hadn't really bothered to ask Muriel why they turned the lights off. However, as Crowley was re-entering the bookshop in preparation for a proper sulk, he noticed that many of the lights had been switched on. Not that it mattered to Crowley, he could complain at Muriel whether the lights were on or off.
"Muriel! I have a job for you! I need you to bribe Nina for coffee!"
The demon's voice was non committal, he would never force Muriel to do his own dirty work, but he almost delighted in seeing that worried look on their face.
Stepping further in, Crowley overheard two muffled voices from the back room of the shop, one distinctly belonging to Muriel, and one distinctly not belonging to Muriel.
"Just a minute Mr. Crowley! I'm with a, uh, customer!"
Hm. Crowley rolled his eyes, Muriel was a terrible liar, it was one of their most endearing traits.
Snippets of the conversation could be heard through the warped wood, and Crowley had exceptional hearing regardless, so he decided it would be best to wait in the couch until this mysterious individual exited the shop.
"What do I tell him?"
"I don't know, just figure something out, it's hot in this room and I'm getting antsy."
"Right, uh. Ok."
Muriel exited the back room with a look of apprehension on their soft face.
"Uh, there's someone here for you, Mr. Crowley."
He snorted.
"Who?"
"The, uh, Supreme Archangel?"
Crowley felt his heart stop. Or, no that wasn't right. His heart felt like it was beating backwards, an unnatural rhythm threatening to beat out of his chest. He wanted to run and hide, he wanted to scream or throw something, to act out in some way to protect his fragile being.
Then, a man exited the back room of the shop. A man that couldn't have been Aziraphale. His hair was dark grey, with a white stripe. The way he carried himself was so unlike Aziraphale. He was dressed in shades of dark blue and red. His face. The angel's eyes, once a remedy for tragedy, a balm that had settled comfortably with Crowley for six thousand years, filling his very lack of soul, were now dark grey and so unkind. Crowley wanted to shake him, to scream in his face until he dropped this sick charade.
"Former Supreme Archangel. They sacked me, I assume. It's all a bit blurry really, but I suppose that's just a side effect of falling."
"Aziraphale?"
Crowley croaked. It came out choked and broken. He ached for the man standing in front of him. Burning fury left to rot, he almost rushed to sweep the man into a hug but was stopped by a single index finger pushing into his chest.
"Not Aziraphale, no. I'm not sure who I am now. Muriel dear, any suggestions?"
The man turned to Muriel expectantly, but all the angel could manage was a curt shake of their head.
"Hm. Disappointing, but I suppose it can't be helped. I'll have to think about a new name, but I suppose Aziraphale will do for now."
It was that exact moment that Crowley decided he was never going to make another friend. Instead, he is going to drown his corporation in copious amounts of alcohol until the world comes to its eventual, inevitable end. And even then he wouldn't stop, he would wail around the galaxies as a whisper of his former self, his story a stark reminder to every one of God's creations to never fall in love with the untenable.
~ ~ ~
The short of it was that Crowley was trapped. He had decided a while ago that he was responsible for Muriel's wellbeing, and he was damned well not leaving them now. He couldn't go anywhere anyway. The Bentley had refused to start, or even unlock ever since Aziraphale left. When Crowley tried to drive away, he ended up right back at the bookshop, bitter and resigned.
There was literally nowhere to go. Pale and shaken, Crowley settled on the sofa with a shuddering breath. His clothes were in a similar state, a wrinkled black T-shirt paired with impossibly tight jeans of the same colour.
Crowley continued to sit on that couch for a total of three hours. If you had seen him, a comment about how someone could sit that still for that long in such an uncomfortable position would most definitely be in order.
By the time Crowley had broken free from his trance, Muriel had gone upstairs, leaving him alone with 'Aziraphale'. The demon had shuffled about a bit while Crowley was spaced out, and was at the moment of his reawakening that Crowley realised he was rearranging books. Indignant fury bubbled in Crowley's chest, the nerve of this man to treat this place as if it was his own!
"Don't touch those."
Crowley warned with a hint of wariness.
"Or what? This shop is actually mine, last time I checked."
The man sneered at Crowley, an expression that he had not seen on Aziraphale's face for the six thousand years he had known him.
"This shop stopped being yours the moment you abandoned it for heaven," Crowley rose from the sofa to snarl more effectively at the man currently shelving a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Crowley wasn't actually much taller than Aziraphale, but his fury cut clear through the tension of the room anyhow.
"And that obviously didn't work out too well."
Aziraphale's expression faltered, the contours of his face dipping into a deep frown. He brushed a bit of lint off of Crowley's shoulder, sending shivers down the demon's back as a result of the contact.
"Watch yourself, dear boy," he sighed, "or you very well may find yourself in a situation you can't charm your way out of."
Crowley barked a laugh. "Angel," He questioned, "Are you threatening me?"
Aziraphale's soft features soured once more, with pain and sorrow this time, rather than sardonic pleasure.
"I'm not an Angel anymore, Crowley."
His grey eyes were clouded with hurt, and he averted his gaze downwards. Crowley faltered. Empathy flooded his previously rage-soaked resolve.
"You're right. I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking."
His sardonic exterior shed, Aziraphale was wilting. Actively. Crowley wanted to do something. He wanted to hold the angel (or rather the not angel) until the sun exploded. But the feeling in Crowley's heart thrummed with hesitation, ancient shackles restraining his desire.
"Would it.. help to talk about it?"
Crowley treads with caution, he knew this was a tough subject to broach. His own fall had been, well, dramatic, to say the least - blistering wings and skin, faith torn out with such violence that one couldn't help but question God's intentions, even if they weren't the target of the Almighty's wrath. It wasn't a good feeling, but it was a feeling that Crowley would have thrown himself into again and again if it meant sparing Aziraphale from it.
But now, the man in front of him had faced falling. Not only had he faced falling, but he had been the first Angel to fall since the Great War. Aziraphale shuddered, a whole body-movement that only made his despair more palpable*.
Aziraphale's face crumpled further, a look of desperation and sorrow painting the contours of his face, removing what now proved to be a mask of sarcasm and venom.
"No, no I don't think so. I'm sorry for being awful, my dear. I can't quite grasp what's happening at the moment, and it seems demonic nature is far more commanding than I expected."
The man sighed. He seemed to do that a lot now.
"I thought that maybe I could protect you from having to face me.. as I am.. if I pushed you away."
Ah. Crowley's heart soared. A fluke. A front. The man he loved was still there, just hidden behind a mask. Not that Crowley would have tried to make Aziraphale into what he once was, that would be an overstep, and probably more hurtful than he could have imagined. It was at that moment that Crowley laughed once more.
"Wait a moment, you were being a dick just to protect me? Not because you've fallen, but because you thought it was the right thing to do?"
Aziraphale smiled sheepishly, revealing sharpened eye teeth. Crowley tamped down hard on whatever feral thing had awakened inside his chest.
"Oh, I've been such a fool, haven't I?"
Crowley couldn't help but be furious at himself. For being soft, naive, and oh so willing to fall directly back into his angel's arms. He cursed his optimism with abhorrence. The feeling in his chest was screaming. No, you fool! We've seen how this ends! Get out now before he hurts you again!
"Ngk."
His voice was laced with hurt and anger (Not hate, never hate). Yet, for someone's sake, Crowley couldn't yield his affection for the man in front of him, no matter how hard he tried. Aziraphale stared up at him through his eyelashes, his grey eyes blown wide with adoration and pity.
"I fear I've hurt you, my dear. More than I ever knew. There's no acceptable way to make up for my actions," The man took Crowley's hand in his own. "But I hope that you understand that every time I've pushed you away, I was only ever doing so out of a desire to keep you safe. Oh, I've been so hopelessly misguided. Leaving for heaven. I can't say it wasn't necessary, but I realise there were far kinder ways to go about it. I'm so sorry, my dear. I never... I never meant for you to think I don't care for you with the utmost sincerity."
It took Crowley a minute to process what was happening to him. He had been so, so wrong. He had thought Aziraphale to hate him, to think of him as unworthy of loving such a perfect creature. He delighted in his own misjudgments, reaching to pull the man into a hug that he hoped spoke volumes.
"I forgive you."
It was a whisper, barely audible to himself, but it had brought tears to Aziraphale's eyes.
After around 3 minutes of this, Crowley pulled back a smidge to look the man in the eyes.
"So. What heinous misstep did you commit to face the wrath of The Almighty?"
Aziraphale blanched.