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Not all days are great. Thankfully, most of them are, but not all.
That's normal. No one has perfect days every day. Not even occult beings.
Crowley would label the days as 3 different kinds.
1. Great days.
2. Bad days.
3. Worse than bad days.
Normal days didn't really exist. There wasn't such a thing as normal days; they all fell under the 'great days' umbrella.
Bad days weren't that bad. They were only days where maybe he was feeling a bit down, nothing else. Maybe taking a walk or listening to some music calmed him down. Bad days didn't usually last until the end of the day.
Worse than bad days did. They were days where he couldn't bring himself to get up from the bed in his flat, where all he wanted to do was sleep but he couldn't bring himself to, where an invisible weight was rested on his back, God knows from where, and didn't let him do anything else than stare at the ceiling or sunny windows covered by black blinds.
Worse than bad days were by normal, attached to nightmares. It wasn't new. If he was having a ‘normal’ day and on the night of said day he had a nightmare, it was clear that a worse than bad day was coming. After that day, there would probably be one or two worse than bad days, then a bad day, and then everything would be alright again until the nightmares decided to attack again.
There were bad days where he felt the same kind of pain that he felt in worse than bad days but without the nightmares, and in a much lighter kind of amount. Then, he would get out of bed when he found the strength, maybe drink some coffee and fix things.
He felt himself suddenly surrounded with water. He opened his eyes, trying to get his head out. When he did, he realized he was not surrounded by water. And it by far did not feel like water.
He felt the liquid around him start to burn, a subtle burn that slowly switched into an agonizing, destroying one. He felt all his body burn in it, trying to get out of the puddle. He looked behind as he felt the acid in his wings.
They were burning, soft and gentle, stardust covered feathers being slowly burnt to nothing but black ashes. The acid felt heavy around him, making it harder and harder to get out of it.
He could feel his whole body burn, an insatiable appetite of a fire corroding his figure as he made helpless attempts to stop it. To stop what he had caused, all by himself. What had led him into this. The constant stinging deep within his being, destroying him from the inside out.
He felt the acid get to his back, wrapping around it. But the burn suddenly turned into a soft feeling. It had stopped, leaving him cold. He felt something wrap around his back tightly pulling him.
"Crawley... Crawley..."
"Crowley.. dear, come on..”
He opened his eyes sharply. It was still dark. But it wasn't an agonizing dark. It was a pleasant dark, softly illuminated by a warm, yellow light behind him. His body wasn't burning anymore. It was cold.
He felt something warm reach for his head. It tucked a small hair strand stuck in his face behind his ear.
"It's okay, dearest. It's not real."
He looked behind him. There was no acid there. Just a warm, soft figure stroking his hair, the being's temperature contrasting with Crowley's cold.
"Oh, dear, you're freezing. Here, you kicked the blanket off." It said, wrapping a soft, warm layer around Crowley's body.
"It's okay, my dear. Nothing's happened. You're safe." He heard, with a small, warm feeling of something warm pressing against his forehead.
And weirdly enough, after all these years, for the first time, the burning didn't continue within him. And he didn't feel like a worse than bad day was coming tomorrow.
