Work Text:
“I’m sure you can sort this out,” he said.
“Piss off. Stop humiliating me.”
Crowley lashed out blindly in the direction of Aziraphale’s voice, eyes squeezed shut. His sight had become unreliable anyway.
“Crowley, how am I humiliating you? You want me here, don't you?”
“Yes. No. Ugh, give me a break.” He forced himself upright, swaying faintly, one hand catching the edge of the sofa to steady himself. The alcohol had seeped into every limb, every thought, thick and cloying, blurring the edges of everything that used to be sharp.
“You know why he had to leave. I’m sorry, Crowley.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, already turning toward the kitchen to grab another whisky bottle, “the fuck you are.” He didn’t bother checking what it was. Didn’t care. The label could have said holy water and he might still have twisted the cap open all the same.
-------------
Time refused to behave. The weeks did not pass, they dragged. Stretched thin and brittle, each moment splintering into something intolerably long. Seconds did not follow one another cleanly anymore; they snagged in a way they never had before.
“Why not give him a chance to make it right.”
“You again.”
“Would you rather I left?” The angel chuckled dryly. “It's your choice to make.”
“You don’t say,” Crowley spat out.
This faint idea of companionship still seemed preferable to the silence pressing in from all sides, but he’d rather inconveniently discorporate on the spot than admit it aloud.
“I’m sure he’d come if he could. Working this high up can be rather time consuming.”
“He very well can come any time he pleases.”
He didn’t even bother to expect an answer. The inevitable silence that followed had become painfully familiar.
Don't bother. Don't bother. Don't bother. Crowley told him not to bother.
He does not bother. He will not bother.
---------------
Immortality, Crowley had always thought, made the concept of time become rather irrelevant. He usually divided time into boring and less boring periods, but stripped of purpose and company, it became something indescribably tormenting. There were moments, increasingly frequent, where he could not remember how long he had been sitting in the same place. Whether hours had passed or days. Whether he had slept, or simply blanked out.
“Perhaps you might consider paying Heaven a visit, then?”, the angel suggested later, coaxing him from a dense, dreamless slumber that felt less like rest and more like temporary oblivion. Crowley slowly lifted his head and found himself to be mustered expectantly like the suggestion had been a valid one.
“Yeah,” Crowley murmured, “Marvellous idea.”
“He’d be delighted to see you.”
A laugh escaped him, thin and hollow. “He wouldn’t.”
Not anymore, that was. Crowley swung his legs off the couch and sat up to take another drink.
------------------
On another day, though the distinction had long since lost any real meaning, Crowley sat folded into the corner of his leather sofa. While he looked rather crumbled and defeated himself, his plants flourished. Glossy, rich leaves caught what little light filtered through the blinds, growing vibrant in quiet defiance of their neglect. He had shouted at them. Threatened them. Ignored them for days at a time. Still, they refused to wither. Utterly terrified of what he might do to them if they dared.
His leg jittered restlessly, heel tapping against the floor in an uneven rhythm. His fingers circled the rim of his whisky glass. He no longer drank for pleasure. That had vanished somewhere along the way. Now it was methodical. Measured. A sedation. Something to keep the sharpest edges of his thoughts from cutting too deep.
“You are being obstinate,” Aziraphale’s voice accused him suddenly.
Crowley’s eyes snapped open. The angel had appeared at the far end of the sofa.
“I’m exactly where he left me,” Crowley hissed sloppily, syllables tripping over each other. “Don’t you think it’s his turn to come to me?”
No answer. Of course not. Can’t argue the truth.
“Yeah,” he muttered bitterly. “Thought so.”
He poured the remaining whisky into his glass, watching the liquid settle. Through his lashes he mustered the angel. He watched him for a while, oddly satisfied that he looked rather uncomfortable, then threw bottle cap across the room in his direction. It hit the opposite wall with a dull, unsatisfying tap before dropping to the floor.
Aziraphale dissolved before it could hit him.
--------------
Apparently, it had not been meant to be. He had not been enough. And worse: he had miscalculated. He had believed, foolishly in hindsight, that time had shaped them toward one another. That centuries, millennia, of quiet companionship had built a sturdy bridge between them. That he had changed for the better. Became gentler. More forgiving. Less infernal. And that Aziraphale, in turn, had learned to contradict, to question rather than blindly obey.
He had believed they could—
Crowley exhaled sharply through clenched teeth, cutting the thought short before it could finish forming. Delusional. Heaven had successfully reclaimed its purest soldier. And down here, nothing changed. The world kept turning while he stood still; indifferent and insignificant.
----------------
“Ought you not occupy yourself with something else?” the angel asked on some other day indistinguishable from the ones that came before.
Crowley, leaning against the counter, tilted his head back and drained his glass in a single swallow, barely registering the burn in anymore. His throat had turned as numb as his mind.
“I’ve got eternity,” he replied, a crooked smile pulling at his mouth, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “At present, my chief occupation is ‘drinking and not thinking’.”
“He wouldn’t approve.”
Crowley’s grip tightened around the glass, fingers whitening.
“He is very welcome to say it to my face.”
The words tore out of him raggedly as he hurled the glass across the room. It shattered against the wall in a sharp, crystalline burst. Fragments scattered across the floor beyond repair and he found himself alone again.
How fitting.
----------------
“Crowley?”
The demon froze in the hallway mid-stride, the angel’s voice at his back. He didn’t dare turn around.
“I should not like to intrude, but I find you to be rather upset today.”
It was indeed a bad day. Worse than usual.
“So?” Crowley hissed angrily. “You want me to talk to you about my feelings and pretend I’m talking to him?”
“It might help. Nothing to lose, is there?”
“It’d help me if he actually came,” Crowley snapped, “so I could finally stop talking to you instead.”
He swallowed hard. Oh, he wanted him to come so desperately. Another bottle, yes, that would do it. Drown the sorrow. Sleep it off. Forget. He unsteadily stumbled toward the kitchen.
“Oh, Crowley,” the angel said softly. “He wouldn't want you to ruin yourself. He still cares.”
The words caressed his dangerously fragile soul. Crowley halted instinctively, reaching for the glasses tucked into his collar and sliding them into place like armour.
“Aziraphale doesn’t care,” he murmured. “But thank you for the performance.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “You always know exactly what I want to hear, don't you? Almost like you read it from my mind.”
“He should not have left things behind the way he did. He should’ve tried to see your side.”, the angel interrupted him.
“Yes,” Crowley answered, nodding slowly. Nothing in his voice suggested this could still be fixed. “However, I shouldn't indulge in listening to you, should I now? He’s better than this. Better than me.” Unwelcome tears slipped beneath the sunglasses. “But it is a nice fantasy.”
“I know he misses you, too”, the voice continued softly.
Crowley’s breath hitched. Before he could stop himself, before he could bury the fury deep down, he spun around sharply.
“Stop it!” he snapped.
His finger lifted threateningly toward the angel.
“You don’t get to stand there and pretend you know. You don't. You’re not him. You’re just-”
His outstretched hand met nothing at all. Aziraphale vanished immediately.
“- thin air.”
Crowley sucked in a sharp breath, humiliation twisting painfully through his chest. He wiped harshly at his face, trying to hide the evidence from absolutely no one. His fists slammed into the kitchen doorframe.
“Fuck!”
----------------
The angel came back to him again several bottles of whisky later. Time had stopped making sense entirely; hours, days, weeks, all the same. So Crowley measured his existence instead in emptied bottles scattered across the floor and table.
“Can’t you leave me alone?” he snapped at him. “I can’t deal with you behaving like this.”
“Isn't that the purpose of my existence?”
“You merely exist because I can't allow myself to forget the pain. I don't need you to tell me things he never would.”
“Oh, my dear-”
“Shut it!”
“No.”
The demon tilted his head, raised both his eyebrows so high they vanished below his messy fringe. “No?”
“You could undo me right now, could've done so anytime.” the angel said quietly. “But you don't. So do yourself a favor and speak to me, if not him.”
Something in Crowley’s expression shifted then. Tightened. Cracked open.
“You want me to speak?” he asked, voice trembling dangerously close to breaking. “You want to listen to me tell you how the owner of that very face you wear broke me to my core?”
He pushed himself upright, unsteady but driven, crossing the room until he stood directly in front of him. Close enough that, if the other one had been real, their noses would have brushed.
“You want to hear about how, when I realised I loved him-” his voice caught violently, “- loved him with everything I am, I somehow scraped together the nerve to tell him?”
A sharp breath.
“How I thought, foolishly, that he might love me back just enough? Enough to stop listening to the ones who’ve done nothing but pull his strings for millennia?”
His hands trembled violently at his sides.
“Are you sure you want to hear about this?” he pressed, voice rising. “Because I vividly relive it. Every second. Every damn second since he stepped into that elevator.”
He laughed then, but the sound splintered into a desperate squeal halfway through.
“How he looked me in the eyes,” Crowley continued more quietly, “and told me I should become an angel again. As if that was the point. As if that was ever my point.”
His gaze dropped.
“As if I suddenly was unworthy and needed fixing.”
A breath.
“It hurts,” Crowley hissed, “It fucking hurts.”
He held up his hand, counting on trembling fingers.
“I lost my best friend- my only friend, my home and the only purpose I ever had, all in the same second.”
He stared at him angrily, his teeth bare like a wounded animal desperately trying to defend himself.
“And do you know what the worst part is? Some pathetic part of me still would take him back in a heartbeat. And apparently pathetic me also prefers keeping a miracled ghost that looks like him around instead of existing alone.”
Tears streamed freely now. The sunglasses had long since disappeared somewhere behind him, forgotten entirely. For a moment, it looked like he might strike the angel. He needed something, anything, to break. But instead, Crowley drove his fist hard into the wall beside the angel’s head. He shut his eyes, breathing hard, trying to gather himself.
Then, something brushed his cheek. Light. Barely there. Crowley’s eyes snapped open. A translucent hand rested against his face, impossibly gentle.
“Yes,” the angel said softly. “I needed you to say all that, for your own sake. And things need not remain this dreadful forever.”
The faint whiff on his face vanished and so did Aziraphale's conjuration that kept and ruined his sanity likewise.
Crowley remained there for a long while, one fist braced against the wall, staring nowhere. Then he turned sharply, dragging trembling hands over his face as though he could wipe the pain from his skin. He stumbled toward the kitchen, grabbed a bottle without looking, and drank straight from it in long, reckless pulls.
---------------
“You drink too much, dear.”
Crowley turned his head slowly toward the voice. The angel had appeared at the far end of the sofa, watching him with quiet concern. His lips twitched lightly in satisfaction. At least, this Aziraphale would never leave him regardless of what he might say.
“Can you truly blame me?” he asked. “I am a demon, after all.” The first genuine smile in weeks ghosted across his face. He reached out for his glass and raised it toward him.
“A wayward demon”, he toasted melancholily, “ruined by tasting the ephemeral blessing of an angel.”