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It’s not real. That’s the deal, that’s what’s up: none of this is real, it’s all one big dream and not the most phenomenally huge cock-up of both their lives, and it certainly isn’t happening right now. ‘Now’ doesn’t even exist, not really: time is crawling and speeding along as it likes, leaving Crowley behind on the sidewalk like a lost puppy, kicked for good measure. If time isn’t working correctly, that’s a sure sign that none of this. Is. Real.
But oh, Crowley doesn’t really want to forget. He can’t. The way that - no, he can’t even think about it. He can’t think about him. He’s staring out the windshield of the Bentley with the glazed glare of a man gone to war and his hands are as tight on the wheel as the clench of his jaw, the furrow of his eyebrows, the flat and unfeeling line of his mouth. He won’t think about the last five minutes, actually - yes, it’s a deal, at least twenty pounds if his thoughts successfully avoid any sliver of the last bloody, cathartic, hell-spawned five minutes.
What else to think about - well, he can go back a bit further than the last five minutes, can’t he? One kiss (no, he won’t think about it) brings back a whole flood of pictures and touches detached from feelings. Aziraphale’s hand around his waist in a London graveyard, no, he definitely did not swoon even a little bit, it was the laudanum, thank you very much. Aziraphale’s eyes on him, nope, not a smidge of feeling about that, none at all - Aziraphale’s hands on his, if only for a moment, no internal screaming or malfunctioning of any kind whatsoever, no.
“I don’t want to think about you,” Crowley says, the dashboard his audience. His voice is rough: he can feel where he scraped his throat on that lovesick little speech, the one that got him absolutely nowhere, did no convincing at all. All for nothing. No, wait, he’s not supposed to be thinking about that. He can’t; he might actually, genuinely vomit. No, yeah, there’s definitely some bile somewhere waiting to come up, urgh.
Crowley’s out in the country now. Totally out of London. He can’t be in that city anymore, even if Aziraphale is up waltzing in heaven and not down on the streets - Aziraphale lives everywhere even when he isn’t on earth, in the reflections of bake shop windows and the fancy shoes of strangers and the lovingly dog-eared books of people relaxing on park benches. It’d be too much to stay in that godforsaken city and see his smug face echoed all over the place. Too much.
Oh, god, it’s starting to feel real. But it can’t - then everything will go to shit. Crowley can’t vomit now, he’d ruin the leather seats for heaven’s sake - oh, fuck it. He pulls over in a small dirt clearing by the edge of the woods, throws open the car door, and barely makes it to the brush before he throws up with the weight of building fear and nausea.
Crowley turns back to the Bentley and presses his hands into the hood. Oh, no, oh god. Aziraphale. You can’t just do this. In what fucking world would I want to leave this planet to go to heaven with you? I don’t need to be an angel, I don’t need to leave to - I don’t need to leave to be in heaven, don’t you get it, heaven’s where you are. I don’t give a damn about anywhere or anyone else. You. Are. Everything.
The thoughts course through Crowley and they’re painful and stupid and bad. It’s pathetic how - how much. It’s pathetic how much he loves that stupid fucking angel and how much it’s hurting him. His grip tightens on the hood and his head sags downward, and no, god, he can’t cry again, but it’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. Six thousand years of time spent blissfully annoying and coveting Aziraphale and it’s all hitting Crowley at the same time, a whole meteor shower of lost want. Oh god, oh god, oh god.
The thing is, it’s just, it was so. (Deep breath, count to ten, okay: now you can think about it. Ready, set, go.) Aziraphale’s mouth on his, finally, fucking finally. He can’t even remember how long he’d waited. So many years of imagining that sensation and now it’s burned into every inch of him: their mouths together so that Crowley could say I love you without those heavy words, getting to say it all with his hands on Aziraphale’s lapels and his feet firmly planted to keep him from ascending, finally telling Aziraphale in no uncertain, ambiguous terms. I fucking love you, you idiot, and you’re ruining it for the both of us and I don’t even know if you. I don’t. Know if you.
Love me.
He does. Aziraphale does, he has to, it’s been in his eyes for god knows how long and his hands forever and ever, but. Shades of grey and all that. He’d kissed Aziraphale and the part of him that had been waiting finally got to rest, he finally felt relief, but now it’s dead and Crowley doesn’t know. Aziraphale chose heaven, not Crowley, so how can Crowley bloody well know if Aziraphale loves him anymore, even if he’d - known before? It’s over. Six thousand years together and it’s actually, really over, not a fake-out like so many other times. Aziraphale is the Supreme Archangel of Heaven, and Crowley is crying on the cold metal of his beautifully, blissfully ignorant car.
“Fuck,” he says. He’s drunk with the sadness and the anger and the emptiness and all those ugly spaces in between. “I need you,” he says to the sky, probably slurring the words but who cares, really, there’s no point - “Come back. Please. Just. Come back. I’ll forgive you, you know I will, I’ll always forgive you. Just. Ngk.” Thoroughly choked up, Crowley opens the door again and slumps back into the driver’s seat. He knows he looks pathetic. It doesn’t matter: everything is. “I love you,” he says, to the car, to the world, to one being in heaven. “I love you so much it made me puke on the side of the road.”
I love you so much I’m saying it after six thousand fucking years of paralysis. I love you so much I’m showing it in front of my car. I love you so much I really can’t go on without you, not really, not like myself. I’m lost. I need to kiss you again and I need you to return it, goddammit, I need you to. To love.
Crowley grabs the steering wheel with far more force than necessary. “I need you to choose us, you beautiful idiot,” he groans. Then he rests his forehead on the top of the wheel. It’s going to be a long - however long it’s going to be, if he can’t get it together, but oh, he can’t. Not one bit. So he stays there for a while, with his head on the steering wheel and his heart somewhere in the soppy, muddy ditch by the side of the road, and he doesn’t think about Aziraphale at all, and when he puts his foot to the pedal again, the ache inside him settles in for the ride.