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The sun goes down like a dream ending, sliding behind the sea without a whisper. Crowley settles back on the rock that still holds some of the day’s warmth and watches the humans on the beach.
He should know some of them, probably. It’s been almost a year of living here and even he’s noticed that there’s humans around. The odd few who greet him and Aziraphale by name, the occasional kid who comes to steal apples from the straggly trees that he can’t be bothered to protect too fiercely. The ones that Aziraphale’s made friends with.
He sighs and stares out over the waves. The humans remain resolutely nameless.
A list of demon names flick into his mind instead. That one’s dead, that one’s harmless because he’d liked Eric, that one’s unknown, that one’s unknown, unknown…
No.
He shakes his head, a physical attempt at driving away the thoughts.
It doesn’t work. Hasn’t worked for any of the nearly three hundred days he’s spent living here yet, for any of the nights where he feels like he’s about to crawl out of his own skin and try to throw himself at the mercy of the universe.
He doesn’t know where the demons are. He doesn’t know what the demons want, or what they might make of his freedom now.
The sand’s too deep for him to pace like he wants to. And besides, the humans are still there, gathered together like memories stored into a scrapbook.
Crowley snarls at himself, gets to his feet. He can’t think why he’d imagined the beach would help. The cliffs haven’t, the hours of backbreaking work done in his own garden haven’t.
The waves are whispering against the stones. Low and mournful; Aziraphale likes the sound of the sea but he finds it sad here, as though the waves’ reluctance to find the shore matches his own doubts.
Sometimes he thinks there’s words in it, murmured by sea and stone, and other times he’s sure it’s only his own mind playing tricks. Easy to call it paranoia but then Hell have long memories and a lot of anger to draw on.
He walks back home the long way around; the gulls are quiet and the soft sand still warm underfoot. The cottage glows in the distance like a miracle, and perhaps it is a miracle that everything’s brought them here in the end, perhaps he’s meant to just accept this as a gift from God or something, believe he’s allowed this and it won’t get taken away or broken or ruined or…
The golden light in the windows suddenly seems like mockery. A toy dangled in front of a cat, ready to snatch away at the last moment of the stupid creature reaches for it.
And he’s done more than reach for it. He’s brought Aziraphale here and Bentley and all the fractured remains of his belongings: the Mona Lisa sketch and the bullet hole transfer stickers, the old Queen t-shirt and the robes from Rome, a few dozen things across six thousand years that a demon’s deemed worthy of keeping. Everything he’s ever loved and… and…
Loved.
For a moment, the enormity of that word threatens to drown him. A wave, a tsunami to wash him and the fast changing foundations of his life away.
Demons aren’t allowed to love. He’s not sure he’s realised before now that he can; not in the most human meanings of that word and suddenly it feels like just one more thing they might take away from him.
‘You’re late back,’ Aziraphale says softly. He’s bent over an old book that seems mostly fragments of paper and leather, glueing it back together. His hands are sure, steady.
Crowley jams his fingers in his pockets and wills them not to tremble. ‘Couldn’t settle.’
Concern crosses Aziraphale’s face like a cloud. ‘You do seem restless, my dear.’
The book gets placed on the table and Aziraphale comes over to him. Stands alongside him and Crowley finds himself crowding towards the angel. Wanting to be close to him. Needing to be close to him.
‘Sorry.’
‘No. No, Crowley, you don’t need to be sorry. I’m concerned about you. Worried. You don’t seem…’
He swallows. Hard. Thinks back over the past couple of weeks and the effort he’s made to not be a nuisance to Aziraphale, the amount of time he’s spent out on the Downs or with Bentley so that he’s not been darkening the cottage with his dark moods.
‘I didn’t… Aziraphale.’ The name falls from his lips like an anchor dropping from a ship, something to tether him back to the world. ‘Aziraphale?’ And he’s not sure what he’s asking for, what possible answer there could be to any of this.
‘Crowley.’ He forgets, sometimes, that Aziraphale was a soldier before anything else. Before Crowley was a demon, let alone the demon with this name.
But he was, and even now, when he decides something’s wrong, Aziraphale goes into war mode. Takes control, makes things stop happening, makes it… safe and Crowley hates himself for clinging onto that word, reaching out for that dream.
The ward going up on the cottage makes his skin tingle. But it’s Aziraphale’s ward, as safe to him as Aziraphale’s touch.
Strange to think now there’d been a day in Eden when he’d flinched away from the white wings, afraid that they might scald him with their holiness.
‘Tell me what’s wrong.’
There’s a touch of command in Aziraphale’s voice, a last remnant of grace. He can’t help but to respond to it.
‘I don’t know.’
Aziraphale looks at him, that intense regard that might have felt threatening or humiliating coming from another angel but from Aziraphale just makes him feel cherished. Protected.
‘Can you try and explain?’
He can’t. The words will cut his tongue to ribbons, claw their way up his throat, shatter the walls he’s built so carefully for so long.
But Aziraphale wants him to, and he’s walked back into Heaven and Hell for the angel, so what cost is another battle here on Earth?
He stumbles his way through it. Halting, ashamed, afraid. Alone.
But then Aziraphale’s hand is laying lightly on top of his and he thinks, no, not alone. Not now.
The words don’t hurt as badly as he’d feared. Aziraphale doesn’t look annoyed. The clock on the mantelpiece, stupid domestic human thing that it is, ticks on regardless.
‘Oh Crowley,’ and he’s glad there’s no sympathy as such, no apologies, no forced offers of comfort. Just Aziraphale sitting alongside him, understanding so evident in his face, in those ever changing eyes.
‘I didn’t know retirement was gonna be this hard,’ and it’s a weak attempt at a joke, he knows, but he feels better for Aziraphale’s smile in return.
‘I don’t know what to do.’
Aziraphale shrugs. ‘The humans have a lot of names for this kind of thing, I gather. A lot of ideas. We can try them, if you’d like.’
‘I don’t know how-‘
A smile. A confident one, a let me take control one. ‘There’s plenty of books on the subject, my dear. I’m sure some of them will come in useful. And the internet. I’ve got plenty of time for researching things, after all.’
‘I don’t baby sitting a demon is quite what you had in mind for living here, Aziraphale.’
‘And what if I wanted to spend time with my friend?’ Aziraphale asks softly.
Crowley doesn’t have an answer to that. Doesn’t try and find one; just steels himself and reaches out a bit. Dares to be brave, braver than that desperate day he’d pulled Aziraphale in for a kiss.
This time, he reaches out with a hand that’s trembling no matter what he tries to do. Knocks into Aziraphale’s hand and it’s clumsy, jolting but the angel gets what he’s trying to do and wraps his hand around Crowley’s. Holds him, as though he might be something worth protecting.
Crowley lets himself be held. He thinks, on another plane, he can hear wings unfolding, arcing over them both.
Aziraphale stays silent and it’s enough, for now. Outside, the South Downs are completely lost even to Crowley’s eyes in the dark but here, he thinks he might finally be on the way to being found.