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Chapter Text

Crowley had never become particularly adept at chairs. It may have been due to the extra vertebrae he snuck in when slinking around dark corners for dark deeds purposes (what Aziraphale aggravatingly referred to as ‘a spot of mischief’). It may have been his innate resistance to authority (which, according to Aziraphale, was ‘utter nonsense, Crowley, really—do you think Big Armchair has a plan for world domination that hinges on your personal willingness to sit upright?’). It may just have been because chairs were difficult, which, to be fair, they truly can be. Whatever the cause, Anthony J. Crowley had never quite been able to maintain an expected position in one for more than a few minutes, unless he was too drunk or depressed or drunkenly depressed to notice he was accidentally doing it right. And for this reason—whichever one strikes you best—he was perched upside down on Aziraphale’s sofa, head hanging off the front and feet dangling over the back. His sunglasses hung precariously off the cliff of his forehead, which should have been a match in colour for his hair by now, except he had forgotten that blood rushed to the head in this position, and so his simply did not.

‘Hey’ngel,’ he slurred cheerfully. ‘What d’you reckon they named first: kiwi the fruit or kiwi the bird?’

The days since the Apolocalypsn’t had been weird. There had been rather more than seven of them—at least that’s what Aziraphale had told him, and the angel had been almost entirely sober for the duration. 

The weather had been normal. The news had been normal. The ducks had been normal. Normal normal normal. Which, if the world hadn’t almost been un-world-ed, would be…well…normal. But it had almost been un-world-ed, and only ten beings on this ridiculous little planet were even aware of it, and that, in Crowley’s professional opinion, was extremely and distinctly not normal. Aziraphale said he was being silly. His whiskey, thankfully, disagreed.

‘What was that?’ Aziraphale popped his head around from one of the stacks. Crowley had tried to count the stacks once, but they kept multiplying and when he’d complained, Aziraphale had mumbled something about fish and loaves and bloody useless turnips and Crowley had gone back to his miraculously refilled glass. 

‘The…the…kiwis. Which one was first, the little bird running around all cheep cheep cheep or the fruit with the fuzz and the seeds?’

‘Gooseberries,’ Aziraphale said definitively, heading back toward whatever it was he had been doing. Which was likely nothing, really. Crowley had the sneaking suspicion he’d been studying the same leatherbound book for at least some of the rather more than seven days since the thing hadn’t…thinged, and he wasn’t altogether sure he was even reading the words at this point. 

‘Wot gooseberries? Wha’d’you talking about “gooseberries”? No one even likes those. Do they? No, they don’t. They must if people sell them? Aw, people’ll sell anything if they’ve got it. Buy anything too, s’long as it’s less than five pound and they can put it in one of those little reusable bags. Maybe I should get one of those little reusable bags. What would I even put in one of those little bags? Oh, yeah! Hey, angel! Which came first, the kiwi the bird or the kiwi the fruit?’

A sigh came from somewhere to Crowley’s left—the bookshop was all Crowley’s left in this position—that sounded like it could lift the sand from the Sahara. Probably could do, though if that’d been the case, he likely would’ve done something about all that expanse of non-arable nothing Adam and Eve had been let out into. Sand did tend to get into places sand oughtn’t to be; Crowley certainly knew that much. Spring break in Cabo his skinny demon ar—

‘The fruits are Chinese gooseberries. They proved a popular export to New Zealand and were renamed as a marketing ploy to attract further interest.’ 

‘Furfur’s interest? What’s someone named Furfur got to do with gooseberries? Feel as though I knew a Furfur once. Hmm.’ Crowley’s eyebrows, which, unlike his blood, had succumbed to gravity, were rather a chore to drag out of his hairline to furrow. Yet, with a valiant effort, he did manage it. ‘Aziraphale, did we ever sell gooseberries?’

Footsteps shuffled across the carpet until a pair of very annoyed trousers stood upside-down in front of Crowley’s eyes. 

‘Crowley, as much as I have enjoyed this stimulating discussion on East Asian-Oceanic trade history, I do think it’s time for you to sober up.’

‘How d’you make the creases look angry? Do I have creases? Mine certainly aren’t angry with you.’

‘Crowley.’

Uh oh, he’d said his name in italics. Time to return the amber goods to the bottle from whence they came. Crowley twisted his neck to rest his head on the seat of the sofa, then spun his legs down and around. If he landed in a heap on the floor, that was only to ensure no excess pressure on his knees, as they were getting on in age. Probably. 

‘Nice shoes. Those new?’ Crowley looked up into a face at war with itself.

Aziraphale—Principality, Original Owner of the Flaming Sword, Guardian of the Eastern Gate—wanted to be frustrated with him. He also, Crowley surmised by the way he rubbed his hands together like a mating cricket, wanted takeaway. And if Crowley—Demon Title Something Something (he’d never checked), Original Tempter of Humanity, Guardian of the Stomach of Soho—chose to press his advantage, well…he was only acting in accordance with his nature, after all. He untangled himself from himself with a practiced grace (a bit more practiced than grace) and snatched his glasses up from where they were attempting an escape beneath the couch. 

‘Curry, then?’ he asked, already swishing toward the bookshop door. ‘Chicken or beef?’

‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale warned in his ‘don’t you even consider doing the fiendish thing you’re considering doing and don’t tell me you weren’t considering doing it, I know you, you wily old serpent’ voice.

‘Ah, lamb then,’ he shouted over the noise from the open door. No point in turning around. He could feel Aziraphale’s wiggle from the road. The Bentley was right where he’d left her: three swaggers away from the bookshop entrance. Crowley sidled up, thinking he might well like goat meat himself if he could arrange it to be arranged (which he was quite sure he could), and laid a hand on the Bentley’s roof. The sun had warmed her to the touch, and she was completely and thoroughly asleep, or near as a car can be to sleep, which is much nearer than you might suppose. Crowley gave her a light stroke just above the passenger door and felt her settle more deeply into the road. Walking it would be, then. Good thing Aziraphale made him put back his drink after all. 

The noise of Soho, packed to the gills at all hours by a startlingly diverse crowd (except on Friday and Saturday nights, when it became an altogether different startlingly diverse crowd), was an absolute delight to Crowley’s ears. He’d never admit it, but the throngs of chattering humans filled him with a sort of peace, a sense of purpose entirely other than what Hell had handed him the past several thousand years. They were loud and brash and horribly lacking self-awareness. They laughed and pretended not to cry. They lied about recycling habits and calorie intake. They were dehydrated beyond the allowances of physics, and the best of them brought dogs along once in a while. Lord Satan below, Crowley did love dogs. 

As there was an abhorrent lack of the microwolves on the pavement at the moment, Crowley was able to notice the music piping out of shops and cafes as he passed. Boy bands (he’d invented those), K-pop (only humans could’ve come up with that one), and soulful covers of rock music from decades still fresh in the memories of the people rushing out the doors with long shots in their paper cups. The Bentley would’ve blown a gasket listening to the snippets pushed onto the road every time a patron went in or out, but to Crowley it was tolerable. Ok, perhaps not that record shop playing Abbey Road, but he resisted his urge to leave every copy scratched in its sleeve as he walked past. Whether or not customers purchasing the album suddenly found themselves at a loss for footwear whenever they crossed the road was positively none of his business. 

No, his business, as handed down to him from Aziraphale and the Creases of Doom, was food. He was fond of it, though eating in front of others had always made him oddly self-conscious. It was the worst with Aziraphale, which made no sense at all as the angel would be too busy ‘savouring’ with his eyes closed or talking away about Shubert or Proust or King Charles or something else Crowley had inevitably slept through during the height of its popularity. He wasn’t uncultured or uncaring, Crowley—quite the opposite in fact. He simply didn’t want to soak up more than his fair share, you see, and left what he could do without to those who could not. Such as—

‘Mr. Fell sent me,’ he declared, throwing his arms up in mock surrender as he entered the restaurant. 

‘Tapping his foot or rubbing his hands?’ Chico asked from behind the counter. His name was absolutely not Chico, had never been Chico, would never be Chico. Thing is, he looked like a Chico, and since neither of them had ever properly introduced themselves, Crowley’s brain ran with it. 

‘The hands thing. And he said my name all slantways,’ he added, grimacing awkwardly while tilting his body into a human(ish) imitation of the sound. 

‘Lamb then,’ Chico shouted toward the back. ‘Double order of butter naan and—’

‘Hmm? Er, goat. Please.’

‘Just a minute.’ He raised his voice. ‘We don’t have any goat in do we?’

‘Yeah, came in fresh about ten minutes ago! Don’t remember ordering it, but if he can wait…’

‘Do we dare?’ Chico asked, a conspiratorial eyebrow arching. Aw, Crowley liked this one.

‘As long as you don’t send me back there to wait empty-handed, I reckon we’ll be alright. I’ll just blame the traffic if it goes pear-shaped.’

‘You didn’t drive…’ Poor Chico, human as human comes.

‘Details.’ Crowley winked a wink for the cheap seats and flung himself into the nearest chair to wait. His mobile had a little folder for social media apps—he was nothing if not meticulous—and he opened each in turn to see what was trending. The top influencers on each unknowingly did most of his work for him. All that was left was to pick up on the flavour of the week and plant a few seeds of hedonism here and narcissism there. (He was rather proud of influencer culture, though he hadn’t admitted to Aziraphale that he’d had a rather large hand in its advent, as the angel believed them to be the hyenas of the internet and referred to their devotees as ‘poor deluded ninnies.’) Flicking open TikTok, Crowley pursed his lips and looked around. Two young women were standing at the register, talking far too loudly for casual conversation about the environmental impact of eating meat. They would have a point, Crowley thought, if they’d been educated on even one single true fact about the situation. As it was, they were regurgitating the same abject piffle he’d seen in videos during last week’s internet scan. 

He pressed the little plus sign, threw on a filter at random, and recorded his mouth opening and moving in toward the camera at a frightening speed. A quick search for viral sounds and a caption would do it: POV You’re goat curry being eaten next to angry vegans. Hashtag FYP, Hashtag For You, Hashtag For You Page, Hashtag Viral, Hashtag Carnivore, Hashtag Meat Lover, Hashtag Vegans, Hashtag Curry, Hashtag Hell In A Handbasket. And post.

‘A. Z. Fell and Company!’ Chico grinned over at him and held up a bulging paper carrier bag. ‘How long have you been “And Company,” if you don’t mind me askin’?’

‘Since before the dawn of time,’ Crowley replied, smiling and shaking his head, a loose strand of hair bobbing about on his forehead. He handed over a wad of money that would’ve covered several takeaways, tapped his fingers decisively on the countertop, and strode out the door. He could just make out the scoffs of the women inside as the door closed behind him. He couldn’t wait for their call-out duet to go viral. It really was too easy.

The carrier bag swayed at his side as he ducked and weaved his way back toward the bookshop. It had gotten a bit warmer in the short time he’d been indoors. The Bentley was probably lost to dreamland for the day, and as his appearance was rather similar to hers, Crowley wondered whether a nice long nap might be in order for him as well. Nothing puts a person (he used the term lightly) in the mood for a bit of sleep like a warm curry on a boring day. The record shop, now coming up on his left as locations bound by earthly laws of time and space were wont to do, had its doors held wide by little rubber wedges. Inside, the proprietor could be seen crouched low on a search beneath the bins. 

‘Obviously I had them when I came in here!’ Her customer seemed borderline frantic, and she was straining the seams of a pencil skirt in her attempt to find them. Whatever them was. ‘I spoke to you, bought the album, and headed for that aggressive looking coffee shop over there. But when I got there—it just doesn’t make sense! Where could they be!’

Crowley looked the customer over and picked up his pace. Walking through London without shoes…ghastly misfortune. True shame. Hate to see it. What he did not hate to see was the corner approaching in a sort of maroonish scarlet brown. He still didn’t understand why Aziraphale had gone with that paint, but if there was one thing he knew about the angel, once something stuck, it stuck for ages. Why not repaint it a nice deep green. Or purple. Crowley had always had an affinity for those colours. Deep rich jewel tones you could properly sink into on a rainy day. Maybe he’d suggest it. Maybe he’d get drunk again first. First first, however, he had to fight the last few metres through this wind. Why in the seven hells was it windy all of a sudden? People were pressing themselves up against buildings and blocking their eyes as though a sand storm were blowing right down Wickber Street. Sand did tend to get into places sand oughtn’t be, but this was a bit far off the mark. It would’ve been, anyway, if there had in fact been any sand, which there was not. 

The wind though! It rushed past Crowley’s ears loud as anything, as though it was shouting to him. Quiet down, then! Can’t make out a word you’re saying and I don’t like your tone! He didn’t actually shout back at the wind, as that would be a bizarre thing to do even for him. Blokes wind up locked away in hospital for less than that these days. He did shout it mentally, no harm in that. It didn’t let up even for a moment, but it did change its tone, which Crowley supposed was good enough.

‘Oh, Great Demon! Tempter of Man! Conductor of the Sky! Come to us, we bid you!’

‘Er, not the best time chaps? Could we maybe reschedule for another, say, thousand years or thereabouts?’

‘Oh, Great Demon! Come to us! Come to us NOW!’

The wind stopped. Pedestrians looked at one another with confusion and fear. Cars began to inch along from where they had stopped, hazard lights blinking dull rhythms into the afternoon. A queue formed outside the nearest cafe. (Of course it did; nothing soothed humans more than refined sugar dissolved in stimulants.) For the first time since the end hadn’t managed itself, and to the certain delight of one Anthony J. Crowley, the news would be not normal. It would delight Crowley, if Crowley had been there to be delighted by it. As it was, there was an empty bit of pavement no one noticed. An empty bit of pavement beside a slumbering old car, the rear wheel of which cast a shadow over an exorbitantly priced pair of sunglasses—and nothing more.

Chapter Text

Crowley lurched forward, grateful the ground beneath him was rather flat. He squinted at it. Yes, it was flat, but it was also ground. Not pavement ground or Hyde Park ground, but rather ground ground. What on earth was he doing in a place with ground like this? He’d been summoned, that much was obvious from the tug-whoosh-slam through time-space. Or was it space-time? Yes, space-time, as space had been invented first and therefore merited top billing. Aziraphale had told him once that, should they ever go into business together, he would have top billing on the signage because his name began with an ‘A.’ Crowley had pointed out that no, in fact, his business name as registered with the Shoptraders Association was A.Z. Fell, and as he himself had long been known as Anthony J. Crowley, Aziraphale’s name would have to follow. It didn’t matter much, Crowley knew, as they would never pursue such an endeavor. But as it was, or were…be…do…would do…summoning did tend to turn both his mind and his stomach sideways. Summoning!

‘Fuck, you lot really picked a shit time for this. Aziraphale is going to be proper mad if he doesn’t get his lunch in the next fifteen, and it’s already a precarious situation, as evidenced by the lamb.’

‘Demon of the Dark Lord, you have come to hear our plea and offer us an exchange. How shall we call you as we make this, the first covenant of our clan in a generation or more?’

‘Eh, wot? How many of you are there?’ Crowley squinted harder as ritually marked faces stared back at him, dappled by the afternoon sun filtering through the trees. They formed a circle with a rather wide diameter as these things tended to go. He turned to take them in, each in turn, which was a strange undertaking without his sunglasses. ‘Bugger all, I’ve dropped them,’ he mumbled, glancing about the leaves at his feet. ‘What d’you want? And where are we? Are those mountains over—aww, no. No, don’t tell me. I’ve been here before. There was a group like you, that much I remember, though they did have the decency to wait for dark. Aziraphale’s right, no accounting for manners these days, is there?’

‘Oh Prince of Darkness—’

‘No, nope, wrong. Not a prince. Not even especially dark, me. Probably have got a title, everyone’s got a title down there, but I’ve never been interested in all that. Crowley, the name’s Crowley. The Demon Crowley, I suppose, if you’re feeling the need to add…’ He spun his wrist meaninglessly in the air.

‘Oh, Demon Crowley, we have asked you here to our humble Carpathian—’

‘Car pa thian! Ohh, that’s right! Vlad! How could I ever forget Vlad? Terrible man he was, wasn’t he? Yeah, with the spikes and the blood and all that. Ugh. Glad we got rid of him. That was you lot, was it? Welllllll not you personally, but your whole…’ He circled his wrist again. Nouns were never really much his area. ‘So what d’you want, then? Got quite a bit on this afternoon, I don’t mind saying.’

‘DEMON CROWLEY! There are fires ravaging the continent and we fear the destruction of our homes and the death of our people. Our leaders would have us vote; our priests would have us pray. But we alone, gathered here before you, hold the knowledge of the true powers in this world. What say you, Lord of Lies and Tempter of Men? What can we offer to unleash your Power, born before the age of Life and Death, in exchange for protection from the flames engulfing the lands to the west?’

‘My Power, eh? Don’t know how much I’ve even got left, really. Haven’t tested it much. I’ve, err—’ he looked down at himself unimpressed— ‘I’ve got lunch. Fancy a curry? No, your faces are saying perhaps not. Alright then. Let’s have a look about, shall we?’ Crowley strode toward the edge of the circle, carrier bag swinging in his hand. Aziraphale might forgive him for the delay, what with the involuntary trip to Romania and all that, but he would not be as generous if the food was behind. 

The summoners facing him stepped back, probably in fear but maybe just to be polite, until Crowley reached where they had been standing and bounced off. Bounced off. The air.  

‘Oh, you can’t be serious. A demon trap? Really? You dragged me off my route, hauled me through barely particulate matter, deposited me in Vlad’s forest of all unseemly places, demand that I guard against wildfires that were kicked off by Her Herself for all I know, and to top it all off, you bind me into a demon trap? Well! If you think I’m feeling inclined to do anything for you now, you’ve got another thing coming entirely. And forget about the curry, that offer is rescinded.’ He sat on the ground-ground and opened the paper bag, fishing out a plastic container and spoon. ‘Don’t even have an appetite for the rice now,’ he snapped, wrinkling his nose at the drips splattering onto his jeans. ‘Why are these bloody containers always so difficult to open, you’d think in the year of our Dark Lord twenty-nineteen it would be possible to get a damn curry without wearing it as well. At least I went for the goat, only saving disgrace on this horrid afterno—why is the sky getting dark?’

A quick bit of math, which Crowley was surprisingly adept at, though geometry had always rather thrown him for a loop, and he determined that the time, at the time, was, in fact, too early for darkness. It was still a cloud-studded blue day over his left shoulder, in the direction where his attempt at walking had been so brutally rebuffed, but to his right, storm clouds were gathering in an almost comically swirly fashion. Almost comical, but, actually, rather not. Wild nights are my glory, Crowley recalled. Which, was it? Or Who? Doesn’t matter, Charles Wallace wasn’t here to sort things out on his behalf after a liverwurst sandwich and oh look, the summoners were chattering again. 

‘No, we must persist. A rainstorm never killed anyone!’ One hissed at another. 

‘Ah, Noah’d have a thing or two to say about that,’ Crowley answered, his stomach and the goat curry inside it sinking as the storm clouds spread overhead. 

‘Demon Crowley, do not put us off with stories for children,’ the person with the voice that had spoken through the Soho Sandless Storm said. Commanded. What did he think he was playing at?

‘Trust me, Noah was real and his story is anything but appropriate for children. Now tell me what you want and let me out of this nonsense so I can do it or not do it or do it half or three-quarters or whatever I decide to do. If I get wet—if Aziraphale’s naan gets wet—I promise, there will be worse than hell to pay. He’ll make you do the inventory.’ Crowley shivered at the thought, and possibly also because a more earthly wind was creeping into the forest from behind. Crowley hated being wet. He was like a cat. Black cat. A panther, really. Not that there is technically such a thing as a panther, as it referred to–

‘Shit!’ 

Of course the owner of the Sandless Storm disembodied wind voice didn’t actually say shit, but Crowley’s brain heard it that way all the same. It was like that TARDIS thing he’d seen in Aziraphale’s comic book collection, where the guy wasn’t speaking English but the TARDIS box translated the local language into the language most readily understood by whomever was in its range. He liked that guy, mostly. Ought to read more of those little stories. Aziraphale wouldn’t mind, s’long as Crowley brought him a fresh lamb curry. 

‘Shit, shit, shit! Home, now!’

‘You can’t be serious,’ Crowley admonished, gathering his little plastic container’s lid from where it had blown across the grass and fitting it–fit– fitting it back in place to secure the remainder of his lunch. There was more than half left, and he was getting grumpy. ‘You got all dressed up like it’s the whatever-it-was century, hauled yourselves out into the forest, summoned a demon—from London, no less!—and now you’re gonna run off at the first spot of rain? They don’t make cults like they used to, I’ll tell you that much.’

‘Be gone, Demon Crowley,’ the voice one shouted, lifting his ritual shawl (wrap? dress?) above his knees and indeed running toward the faint sliver of blue left between the trees, the rest of the congregation close behind him.  

‘What?! No, you can’t do that! Un-summoning doesn’t work that way! Come back here or I’ll be stuck in this bloody demon trap all soggy and hell bent on learning your TikTok username!’

Heavy rain fell against the trees further into the forest, and the noise was moving toward him. Crowley lifted the refilled carrier bag, wondering whether he should miracle the thing to keep it from disintegrating in the downpour to come, and more-or-less jogged to the edge of the circle with his hand extended. Barrier still in place, he traced the perimeter with two fingers. There had to be a break, these things were never perfect. Break, break, breakbreak, oh! No. Break, break, break…dammit! How in the bloody magician’s turnip had he ended up in the first demon trap ever to be constructed properly?!  

‘Ok, time to think. You’re a demon, demon’s can think. S’how you enact your wiles. Rain, ok. It’s only rain. You can handle rain. Spot of rain, that’s what Aziraphale would say. Spot of rain. Spot of tea. Tea cosy. Cosy and warm. Fireplace. Hearth. Heathen. Heath Ledger. Ten Things I Hate About You. I love you, baaaaabyyyyyyy and if it’s quite alright, I need you baaaabyyyy to warm the lonely nights. Trust in me when I saayyyyy…’

Unfortunately for Crowley’s cover of Heath’s cover of Frankie Vallie, the rainstorm chose that moment to cease being a rainstorm and, instead, to produce a bolt of lightning so close he could have seen his retinas, if he had retinas, which he wasn’t sure he had and it didn’t matter much because the lightning struck its mark, and now he knew what the cult had run from. The whites of Crowley’s eyes gave way as he ran the circumference of the circle again and again, fingertips sparking with the friction of the spell against them. There had to be a way out. There had to be . Because staying trapped was no longer an option. 

An immense howling kicked up from a wind so distressed Crowley might have knitted it a blanket if it hadn’t been threatening his very existence. Lightning continued to split open the sky, thunder refusing to wait its turn to shake the world around him. If he hadn’t been present at the end, he would have believed this was it. The howling drove another sound before it: crackling. 

No. No, no, no!

The trees trembled with anger at his refusal to leave them to their peace, as if he were there willingly, as if he could choose. That thunder did not emanate from the ground was a fact that Crowley was now only eighty percent sure about as it wracked the air and earth alike, knocking him back against the barrier among the mud and sopping wet leaves. 

Help!

Darkness broke in the distance, offering a reprieve far worse than the cloud cover. It was coming–orange and heartless and hot as the pits below. The ancient oak rising up before him raged, whipping the rain back toward the sky as the wind catapulted its branches wildly. And then it happened: it snapped. A massive branch, thicker around than Crowley himself, launched downward through its former brethren and Crowley tucked and rolled to the right, bouncing painfully against the earth as it made impact. He stuck his head out, red hair blocking his eyes from the torrents millimetres beyond, searching for something, anything…

Scrambling to his feet, he inched toward the wooden casualty as though it might return to life and exact revenge upon him. But it did not. It lay still just where it had fallen across the circle. Crowley reached out a hand but met no resistance. He stretched his arm through what was now nothing more than thin air and thick rain. He inhaled, placing a foot across the broken threshold, and ran.

◈◈◈

Once upon a time, the Red Sea had closed behind him. Crowley had slumped onto what he still considered the far bank, wondering what it must have been like getting caught inside as the curtain dropped. Horror, he imagined that day, struck into the very hearts of humans who, while representing the will of the captor, were for all their ills no less human than anyone else. Whether they deserved their fate was not his to judge—at least, not out loud. But the terror they must have felt as those waters crashed onto their heads? That must have been unreal.

Running full tilt through white water, now pouring too hard to allow a glimpse of the world beyond his eyelashes, Crowley worried he might be subject to a similar fate at any moment. Humans often thought of forests as closed things, he’d realized long ago. Places with a definite start and end, fenced in on themselves and able to contain the hopes and fears manifest inside. They convinced themselves that forests were overrun with burrows and caves, warrens and hedges that were impervious to the elements, and therefore the perfect places for The Things That Lurk to do said lurking. Humans, as was far too commonly true, were wrong.

There was nowhere here to hide, in the foothills of mountains that never drew nearer. And if there were three things Crowley hated about running through the forest in the rain, they were the rain, the forest, and the running. For all that was mildly irritating in this world, Crowley hated, hated, hated, running. Doing anything at speed was contrary to the very fabric of his being—with the singular exception of driving, which to be fair, was much slower than the celestial popwhooshes and express lifts the rest of them used—not to mention the damage the mud was doing to his shoes. At present, he was focusing as heavily as possible on how he would manage his boots once this more-godforsaken-than-he-was nightmare ended. It was pointless and entirely useless to his pursuit of an exit from this misery, but it held the panic just beyond the edges of his mind. That was enough.

If someone had been following his ordeal, they might wonder why he hadn’t simply followed the path to his left taken by the cult in their act of cowardly abandonment. The answer was as simple as the question: by the time the branch fell, Crowley had no way of discerning which way had been his left at the time of the aforementioned reprehensible fleeing. Once the air before him became more rain than oxygen (or nitrogen, or whatever the thing was he’d need to be breathing if he had needed to be breathing), there would have been no use in knowing anyway; any rudimentary path would be washed out and invisible before he made it more than a few hundred metres. Crowley was fairly certain there was no compound in hell dedicated to eternal escape from a haunted forest during a torrential downpour-slash-lightning storm. No, this was a special circle designed just for him, it seemed. 

The aquatic disaster around him lit up suddenly, followed closely by a shuddering of the earth beneath his feet. That was far too close for Crowley’s liking, that thunder. He had never minded a rainstorm in theory, so long as the theory involved him being fast asleep or curled around a cup of tea in the bookshop. Another flash-boom combination caught him off guard. There was hardly any time between the two elements, and Crowley’s resolve began to falter. It wasn’t as though he would die, but a discorporation so close on the heels of their tenuous victory might amount to the same thing in the end. 

His gait slowed unevenly at the possibility, providing the perfect opportunity for a root or vine or the spirit of Vlad the Impaler to reach up for his ankle. He didn’t fall far, left arm shooting out to wrap around the trunk of the tree to whom his assailant belonged. He leaned back against it, because he had been running and running and may as well have been standing in place for all the good it had done him. He wouldn’t be leaving this forest. This is where it ends, he thought, the tears running down his face only discernible by their heat. Funny. Somehow he had always thought it would end in a garden.

He didn’t hear it this time. He didn’t hear it because it was so close that the vibrations barely had time to travel before his senses were overtaken by the fire. The fire. This tree, his tree, the tree guilty of attempted murder by arboreal appendage, was on fire. It must have been struck, Crowley reckoned, stepping back to watch as a frightening calm came over him. The world was on fire. Wasn’t that why they’d summoned him here? Ironic, or maybe inevitable. He didn’t know anymore. All he knew was that his clock had stopped. The flames chewed the tree apart as they made their way down toward him. Flames. Flames and water and wood…

Something crept up Crowley’s throat; he didn’t know if he was about to vomit or laugh. Flames and water and wood and he couldn’t feel Aziraphale anywhere on Earth and there were no souvenirs to take this time, I’m so sorry Aziraphale, I’m so sorry, wherever you are, I’ll come to you—

The lower branches were tilting toward him, reaching for the very spot of dirt he occupied in this miserable forest. Or maybe…was the ground-ground lifting beneath his feet, bringing him up to meet the tree? He didn’t know. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that his life as he knew it was over, that the world was burning, that everything was turning the shades of purple and green that the bookshop would never be. Aziraphale mattered. Aziraphale and his books and his stacks like bloody turnips and his angry trousers. He mattered. And Crowley, limbs gone numb and vision blurring, would never see him again.

Chapter Text

Aziraphale paused mid-stride, a full body shiver running through him. Odd. It wasn’t the gooseflesh-raising shiver of the skin responding to winter’s bitter breath, nor was it the convulsive shake of a corporeal agreement with mental disgust. No, this shiver was, as Crowley would say, a secret third thing. People sometimes said—when Aziraphale witnessed one being victimized by such an involuntary shake-down—that this type of shiver was caused by someone walking over the shiverer’s grave. Given the shiverer was obviously present at the time, and therefore did not, presumably, have a grave, it struck Aziraphale as rather a silly premise. Madame Tracy had clarified for him once that it was a connection to the future: someone in the future walked over the yet-to-be but in their time already-was burial site of the present-era shiverer. This explanation had forced a polite, ‘Ah, yes. I see now. Thank you,’ and a drawn out sip of tea from Aziraphale, whose only actual takeaway was that he regretted asking. 

However, this particular reverberation of atoms throughout his body was rather too unnerving to ignore. He had, only the moment before (and the many consecutive moments before that) been wondering what on earth could possibly be holding Crowley up with their lunch. He had done the math, which he was in fact rather good at, despite Pythagoras’s initial doubts, and taken into account the additional time required for patting dogs and enacting some spot of mischief upon Maggie’s record shop. The dogs were inevitable, of course. Crowley had been in love with the beasts since the days of Romulus and Remus (his demon, terrible softie that he was, had taken special care of their adoptive mother once he caught on to her plans for the poor abandoned boys). As for the delay around Maggie’s shop…well, Crowley had seemed so dreadfully without purpose in the days since the End of Days Hadn’t Ended the Days, and Aziraphale knew how intolerant he was of that one particular bebop album, and if he had convinced her to stock a special run of the things and play the music out toward the pavement where any passing somebody might be in earshot, who could blame him, really?

But truly, housewolves and beetles aside, Crowley should not, could not have possibly taken this long to retrieve their lunch. And now the grave-walking shiver? He needed to think. Kettle switched on, tea bag settled in a mug, milk pulled from the tiny fridge hidden in what looked like an old filing cabinet—one must maintain appearances for the sake of propriety after all; Crowley called it ‘the aesthetic.’ While it was possible that Aziraphale’s kettle boiled water a tad more quickly than other shopkeeper’s kettles, let it never be said it didn’t do so by the traditional earthly mechanisms. He had attempted miracle-boiled water before, but he found it nearly as revolting as the illicit microwaved version he’d heard Americans turned to. Someone really ought to get that nation some electric kettles, poor dears. The war was over years ago; surely they didn’t deserve to suffer forever.

Alright then, down to it. Water, tea bag (he didn’t have minutes to spare on proper leaves at a time like this), milk, and sit. He needed to review the facts. Crowley had sobered up, though whether he had done so before or after falling off the couch and landing in an unceremonious heap Aziraphale could not discern. Crowley had taken his lunch order correctly, and if the way he swung the door closed behind him was any indication, he would be conjuring up some goat curry for himself. A quick glance out the window confirmed that the Bentley sat just where she had all morning. The sunlight rolled over her roof in a hazy, rippling sort of manner. Well, then, she must be asleep. And if she was asleep, it meant Crowley had indeed walked to the shop, as Aziraphale had surmised he would. So then. Crowley had gone, Aziraphale had straightened the cushions squashed by Crowley’s fliprollsplat endeavor, and then he had…he had…goodness, what had he done? What had he done with the past week, really? It had been so terribly dull once the adrenaline of defeating The Powers That Be had worn away. The closest thing to excitement he’d had was that windstorm a short while ago.

That had been a tad more unusual than unusual tended to be in these parts when a doomsday countdown clock wasn’t ticking away. He pulled a steno pad out from beneath a stack of what Crowley, with annoying accuracy, called ‘hmmwhatevahthiziz’ and double-checked his earlier calculations. The results were exactly as they had been the first time, which earned them an undeserved squint. That windstorm had kicked up just when Crowley ought to have been walking through his doorway. Crowley had mentioned windstorms before, he was certain of it. Eighty percent certain. One must leave a reasonable margin for error after all. So yes, alright, Crowley had, with reasonable certainty, mentioned windstorms at some point in the past. But what about them had he mentioned? 

It wasn’t to do with the lot downstairs, of that much he was more than eighty percent certain. Ninety-seven, at least. He would have remembered if that had been the case. But they meant nothing to Aziraphale himself, so perhaps it was some sort of demonic something or other. His thumbs rubbed subconscious circles on his fingertips. He had to think harder. The tea, in gross neglect of its duties, had not helped one iota. A shop filled with histories, tales, and even a bit of the truth and his mind couldn’t land on one single volume that might be of use. Oh, why couldn’t he think?

Blrrrrrrrrrrgh. 

‘Dear me, what on earth was—’

Blrrrrrrrrrrgh blrrrrbl.

‘Ah, yes. Well,’ Aziraphale conceded, his ears going red for the sake of no one at all, ‘I suppose you have been waiting rather a long time, haven’t you? It seems such a terribly frivolous thing to do at the moment, but I suppose I would be more likely to come to a conclusion if I weren’t distracted.’

He stood and straightened his waistcoat, which did not require a straightening so much as Aziraphale required giving it one, and pushed his shoulders back further than they wanted to go. ‘Right then, off to the shop for a quick bite and then no more dallying. Perhaps the gentleman behind the counter would remember whether Crowley had been in today, and that would make it a rather worthwhile endeavour on its own account, wouldn’t it?’

His stomach brooked no argument, and so out the door they went. Pausing a moment to unobtrusively lock the place up, Aziraphale noticed a glinting something on the pavement beside the Bentley’s rear wheel. Gluing coins to the ground again, are we? Really, Crowley. There must be some better use of your…

‘Oh!’ The coin came right up in Aziraphale’s hand. He had forgotten in all his years of thwarting wiles that people did, on occasion, simply drop things. ‘Oh dear, and whatever could that be?’

There was something else glinting at him from his half-crouched position beside the car. Something that had fallen almost under the tyre, looking far more substantial than a few pence gone missing from a pocket. Something…familiar. The air fled Aziraphale’s lungs as he stood, exorbitantly priced sunglasses dangling between two fingers. 

‘Alright there, luv?’

Aziraphale jerked his head up, meeting the eye of an older man he may or may not have seen before. He found himself subject to an increasingly worried stare, and mustered what response he could, simply to make it stop: ‘Oh-a, I-um.’ He hoped the purse of his lips was as nonchalant as he intended, though the furrow of the man’s eyebrows suggested it was not. Thankfully, a beeping, swishing sort of alert chimed out from the mobile in the man’s hand at that moment, and he swiped it open reflexively. 

‘Damn, not another one. They’re being hard done by down there, aren’t they?’

‘I beg your pardon, but who are being hard done by down where, precisely?’

‘Romania this time. Those nasty fires that’ve been raging across Greece and the like. Looks like some chance lightning storm caught the wind just right and it’s taking out some forest or other. Transylvania, it says.’

And lo! on the wings of the heavy gales, through the boundless arch of heaven he sails; silent and slow and terribly strong, the mighty shadow is borne along.

‘Transylvania, did you say? It doesn’t happen to mention the name of the forest, does it?’ The metal side visors of Crowley’s glasses bit into Aziraphale’s palm, warning him to loosen his grip. He rested his wrist on the Bentley’s roof to support the weight of them, which far exceeded the few ounces they should have been allowed by physics. 

‘Mm, doesn’t seem to, no. Says something about an ethnographic museum being in the path of the storm, but that’s the end of it. Don’t give much coverage to anything besides war, scandals, and football, do they, now?’

‘No, they certainly don’t. Well. Thank you very much for the, uh, news…update. I should probably—’ he turned to pat the Bentley as she shook herself awake beneath his touch—‘be getting along now.’

‘Yeah, alright. If you’re sure you’re fit to drive. Especially that old thing.’

Aziraphale ran his fingertips along the door handle to sooth her subatomic bristling at the man’s words. ‘I assure you, she is perfectly fit for the road, as am I.’ He guided the door open gently, raising his voice to the man’s back before sliding in: ‘And please, do have a blessed day!’

Once he was closed inside the cab and settled behind the wheel, Aziraphale allowed his shoulders to slump. ‘I don’t have the faintest idea how I’m meant to get to Romania. Of all places, really! I don’t know that I’ve ever even been. And as for Crowley…there was that one time he took on Vlad, what with the arrangement and all, but I can’t imagine he’s returned since.’ 

The Bentley rumbled unevenly around him.

‘No, I don’t imagine you would know, dear. It was so very long before your time. But only…it is, now. Your time. And I know this hasn’t been my particular area of expertise in the years you two have been together, though I can’t help wonder now. Would you? Perhaps? Be so kind?’

She appeared to think for a moment, or as near as a car could do to thinking, which is much nearer than you might assume. Aziraphale laid Crowley’s sunglasses on the passenger seat as though to break them might be to break Crowley himself. Whatever she read in that gesture, it was clearly enough to make up her mind. Aziraphale was nudged forward slightly by his seat, and with one hand on the gearshift and one whispered ‘thank you,’ they were off.

◈◈◈

Aziraphale had never taken to sleep, not much anyway, and he was grateful for that now. Crowley could do without, obviously, but it did make him dreadfully sour and more than a bit swishy in the knees.Well. Shwishi er, anyway. The Bentley must’ve had a particularly good rest, assuming she relied on them the way Crowley did, because the cross-continental journey didn’t seem to wear on her at all. Aziraphale had no idea how many hours it should have taken to traverse the hundreds (or was it thousands?) of miles to the forest in question. He only knew that it had been fewer than 24, which seemed rather improbable. Conan Doyle had said something in one of his books about improbability once, and Aziraphale was just making a mental note to find the relevant manuscript when the Bentley rolled to a stop. 

‘Muzeul Etnografic Al Transilvaniei. Goodness, aren’t you a clever thing!’ Aziraphale cooed, stroking the Bentley’s steering wheel. ‘I knew you were pretty, but I had no idea you were such a brilliant darling. No wonder Crowley is so protective.’ She pressed herself into his touch, warm and nearly purring. Delightful. He’d have to get to know her better under less dire conditions. ‘I’ll just pop into the lobby and see what I can find out, shall I?’

Being the only patron in need of assistance, the conversation was quick. Shame, really, as the whole place looked so frightfully interesting. Imagine, his first ever visit to Romania and not an hour to spare! Oh, he really did need to get out of London more often. He was certainly due a holiday, now that there was no one around to tell him whether or not he was, in fact, due one. The drive to the burnt edge of the forest was a brief one, and while the sense of Crowley—whatever exactly that was, which he had been careful never to dwell on too closely—had been intensifying steadily as they progressed eastward, it grew exponentially as the first charred and splintered trees came into view. This was the spot, though which spot within this spot was the spot might be more difficult to determine. 

‘Will you be quite alright if I leave you here, my dear?’ he asked, standing with the door open. ‘You’ve tucked yourself nicely off the road, and as the sun will be setting soon, this might be rather a nice opportunity for a well-deserved rest.’ 

The Bentley hummed and sank ever so slightly toward the ground.

‘I’ll take that as a yes. Our Crowley is in there, and I promise you: I won’t return without him.’ Aziraphale closed the door as gently as possible; the poor old thing had already slipped into dreamland (assuming cars did dream, which they very well might do). 

Aziraphale tugged at his waistcoat, which, per usual, did not require a straightening, though this time it was appreciative of the reassurance. Hoia Baciu had a reputation for harbouring things it oughtn’t, at least not in this day and age, and Crowley was somewhere among them. Why he didn’t just walk out was a mystery unto itself, and one Aziraphale would certainly untangle in time. But first, he thought as blackened twigs crumbled to ash beneath his feet, he would have to find him. 

Aziraphale had never enjoyed forests all that much, though he would never say so. They were part of Her creation, and he honoured them as such. They were teeming with life and the things that sustained it. They breathed and pulsed and grew and sang. They were lush and beautiful and so very very very dark and buggy and muddy and dreadful and oh he hated them he hated hated hated hated them with every cell of his corporation and then some. And this one, the Hoia Forest, popular recreation area though it was (according to the museum staff, who must know about it if anyone did), was charred and soggy and grabby, what with its roots sticking up from the dirt and its recent torrential rain and its noises that were absolutely bird and frogs and nothing more because of course there was nothing more why would there be more than those things? There wouldn’t be, that’s why. There weren’t. Aren’t. No, don’t be preposterous, Aziraphale, he told himself as the sun sank someplace too high in the sky for his liking. 

You are an Angel of Heaven. You wielded a flaming sword. You averted the Apocalypse, for goodness sake! Imagine being afraid of a few snapping branches in the distance. Honestly. There’s nothing in here that could harm you. Or Crowley for that matter. Oh, where is he? You’d think he had been…trapped. 

‘Oh.’ Aziraphale had wandered a sort-of pathway in from the road, expecting to find a picnic spot or watering hole. What he had not expected to find was a patch of damp leaves lying in a perfect circle, disturbed by one single enormous branch. A glance up at the nearest tree confirmed the source of the thing, and when his eyes traced its path back to the definitely unnatural space into which it had fallen, he spied yet another tragedy no doubt caused by human intervention. He stepped carefully toward the far edge of the circle, bottom lip trembling at the fear still lingering in the air. For the second time in as many days, he crouched low, retrieving an item that struck sadness through his heart. He turned the bit of warped plastic over, his eyes falling on the speck of orange sauce still clinging to the inside. A large carrier bag sat nearby, the valiant effort it had made to defend its contents on display to the mounting darkness. 

Talk about adding insult to injury. They ripped his Crowley right off the pavement, cast him into the wretched plot of nature, and left him to the elements—and they didn’t even have the decency to spare his lunch.

Chapter Text

It was cold. Not cold, but not warm, which amounted to the same thing. The earth in his hole was warm, loosely packed and soft against his belly. It must not have been long. One day, maybe; two at most. It was hard to tell. He didn’t know the smells here—didn’t know the rhythm of the air currents or the movement of the clouds. He used to like new, once. Not so much anymore. He stretched his neck out just enough to see past the overhang of tree roots that were his roof. The rain had gone, and the fire, and the lightning. The air was stale now, but…there was something. 

Crowley wriggled a bit further into the open, if you could call it that. It wasn’t a clearing or a glen or whatever thing one was meant to find in the centre of a forest. It was just trees. Burnt trees and electrified soil and something. He pressed his belly hard against the ground, tongue flickering wildly. Yes. Something. Something…powerful. Something…terrible. Something…

Holy.

‘They’re here,’ he whispered to no one. The bravest birds were finishing their evening songs as the bats took their turn in the sky. Frogs and buzzing insects and small wild things constructed a labyrinth of vibration around him. Not a single one realized the awful force treading through their sanctuary. 

But Crowley did. Crowley could feel it. Maybe it was a multitude of them: celestial warriors sent to retrieve him, to arraign him, to punish him anew for his crimes against this world. 

And what could he offer but surrender? What could one so reduced as he was possibly stand to gain in a fight against Heaven? Perhaps it was a fitting end. Tragic and poetic and right. He had never liked the gloomy ones, Crowley, and maybe this was the reason after all. He knew the story too well. 

The earth shook to his right, and he wondered if his hole was enough. Could it hide him from the host sent to collect their ransom in scales? It had sheltered him from the storm of the sky, but could it shelter him from this?

‘Crowley!’

They’re here. He hid; of course he did. His bravado was the thickness of rice paper, always had been. It was never meant to weather eternity. It was a wonder it had lasted this long. It was a wonder he had lasted this long. There must have been something bolstering him, something keeping him from losing the battle he never expected to win. 

‘Crowley!’

He could almost see it, that something. It was fair and white and soft, hovering at the edge of his memory. A feather held just out of reach. A feather, or…

‘Crowley? Oh! Crowley, is that you in there?’

He coiled into himself, around himself. His hole was shallow and insufficient for his size, but he couldn’t go. He couldn’t. He can’t. That feather, that something…why was he still alive? Why was he still himself? He didn’t want to give up yet.

‘Darling, please. I know it’s dark and rather cold in your current state, but if you would just c—’

‘I don’t want to go,’ he said in a single exhale that came out less of a hiss than he expected. ‘I want to s-stay. Pleas-se. Don’t make me go.’

‘Oh, Crowley. Don’t say such nonsense. Of course you want to come with me. Listen, we’ll get you clean. And warm. Bit of a rest under that blanket you like, spot of tea and you’ll be good as new. What do you say, hm?’

He had forgotten their lies. They twisted their words, tied them into beautiful bows that resembled everything you thought you wanted until you gave the slightest tug. Then they unraveled, messy and swift, and you were burning. Burning at the bottom of the pit. Nothing to comfort you but your own charred wings and their hollow, sardonic words.

‘Crowley?’

‘Angel…’

He sighed, this emissary of God. He smiled, this angel sent to drag him back to hell, or worse.

‘Angel of the Forest, or wherever you hail from, I am already damned. If She has sent you to find me, I beg of you: find me not. For I have nothing to hold, and nothing with which to hold it.’

‘Angel of the forest? Crowley.’ 

His voice broke, and for the briefest moment, Crowley wondered if he was mistaken. 

‘Don’t you recognize me? Wh—’ Vowels tumbled randomly over the angel’s lips. They made his breath soft, almost too polite to push through the surrounding air. Crowley could see him well enough to know his shape in the rapid descent of night, but there was a quality to the sound that was nearly visible as well. It was there, somewhere, just beyond his reach. White and warm. He wanted to touch it, to curl up beside it and…sleep. He wanted to…to sleep. His eyes closed. If there was danger for him here, let it come. The sounds of this angel were no threat to him now. The earth beneath him was warm, loose and soft against his belly, like the words…the words of…of…

◈◈◈

Fire. His eyes were open, he was certain of that. His eyes were open, but the flames were close, so painfully close, as if they were emanating from his very skin. Was it him? No, it was…the world. The world was burning. The world was catching fire and it was spreading. He watched as flames leap from his fingertips, from his feet, and ran away screaming, laughing, razing it all. Ashes, it would all be ashes. Was it him? Was he the reason? Was he the bringer of The End?

◈◈◈

‘Did you sleep here?’

‘Mhm?’ 

It was some hour of early morning. Crowley didn’t know which one, but he supposed it didn’t much matter anyway. What might matter was that the angel, the one who had approached him as the light left the forest, was still there. Or, rather, he was here. Sitting as upright as he could on the lumpy ground, Crowley’s tree against his back. He knew demons could sleep. He slept. It would stand to reason that angels could do it as well, being of the same celestial whatever. He couldn’t recall ever seeing one do it, but then again, he couldn’t recall ever seeing one at all—not since his Most Unfortunate Dismissal, anyway.

This one, though, nose twitching and blinking awkwardly into consciousness, didn’t look quite as he remembered them. He was dressed like a human, which might be part of the ruse to lure him back Upstairs, or Downstairs, or through some secret third set of stairs that had been built after his time. It would make sense, except he didn’t think it did. It was far too good an approximation of human clothing without being nearly good enough. Take the waistcoat, for example: even if humans still wore those, which Crowley had a sneaking suspicion they did not, it was a bit tattered and torn, and one of the buttons was loose. Propped up against the forest the way he was, licking his teeth and shaking his head, he gave an impression more like animate moss than anything remotely worrisome. Not that animate moss wouldn’t be worrisome. Now that he thought about it, animate moss was possibly more worrisome than an angry angel on a mission. Crowley shivered. He did not have time to unlock a new fear today.

‘Crowley! You’re you! Well, that is a relief.’ The angel, which Crowley was now only ninety percent certain the figure was—and he hated being anything less than one hundred and five percent sure of anything—got to his feet with a sort of tilting, brushing, tugging process. ‘Now, I’ll have no more of…what…Crowley? What on earth has happened to your clothes?’

Crowley looked down at himself, now that he was an up-and-down him rather than yesterday’s side-to-side him. He wasn’t wearing nothing, but he wasn’t exactly wearing something either. It was a sort of loose hanging thing-thing. The angel-ish character seemed to think it was cause for alarm, but really, what did it matter what a nobody demon wore to wander a forest? Not that he had been wandering, as far as he knew. But he might. He would. He could wander, why not?

‘We need to get you back where you belong, Crowley. London. The Bookshop. That’s the ticket!’

Crowley’s stomach lurched, pressed against his lungs, tried to escape his throat. He understood the words, though they made no sense coming from this angel-person. He understood so very little, and yet he wanted. He wanted to go, wanted to reach his hands out in front of him until he fell back into his side-to-side self, wanted to go go go. And that…was worrisome. Animate moss level worrisome. 

‘I don’t think…’ He shook his head, stepping backward slowly. No sudden movements, that’s what they recommended. Well, it was what they recommended for wild animals. It was probably good advice in most situations.

‘Now, Crowley,’ the angel-person chided. 

Who was he to speak to Crowley like a disobedient child? Was he someone to speak to Crowley like a disobedient child? This was getting far too complicated far too quickly. There must be a way out. He needed more time, or more sleep, or more not talking to this angel-person who either knew much more about him than he should or who was exceptionally good at faking it. How could he do less talking and more not talking? What had gotten him out of talking situations in the past? The more he tried to remember, the hazier it grew inside his head. Hazy and dark…like a dark hole in the ground…like sleep. That’s the ticket, indeed, angel.

‘Crowley, you’re not looking very—OH! Oh good Lord! You really ought to warn a fellow next time you—’

But that was all Crowley heard. He had barely slithered back into his burrow before dropping out of consciousness. A foot of his tail never even made it past the threshold. Champion sleeper, he had thought in the moment before going under. World Class sleeper, me. 

◈◈◈

Fire. He couldn’t see beyond the flames, but he could sense it. The world. The entire world was burning. The earth itself was shaking with the force of the destruction, and the wind feeding the flames wailed in his ears. It would be gone, should have already been gone by his reckoning. He had never been good at math, much to the lament of Pythagoras. It wasn’t for lack of trying; angels never made any sense to him. How could something bend and simply stay bent? No, real things didn’t stay. Nothing lasted forever. Like the world, burning, burning, burning…

◈◈◈

‘Argk!’ Whatever had dumped Crowley wherever it had just dumped him did so with a stunning lack of ceremony. He did not appreciate it. He could fall off of things on his own. He was quite good at it, really. Ambush predation wasn’t his intended purpose—not that he had an intended purpose, not as a snake, he was just a snake, really—but still, he had a bit of the old anaconda in him. Didn’t he? No, he came before anacondas. He came before rain forests. Hell, he came before continents. He didn’t remember what it was like before continents and rain forests and anacondas at the moment, but he was certain he had come before them. One hundred and five percent. As he should be. 

Now, to determine the whatever that had dumped him in the wherever. The dirt beneath him was…rubber. Black, pristine rubber. Which was, in that case, not dirt at all. On one side of him (he couldn’t gauge his right from his left in this position, as he was in rather more of a pile than a side-to-side at present) was a wall of black leather. Odd, that. The other side, at least, was…also…black…leather. That didn’t solve much of the conundrum. The first side was a tall wall that went most of the way to the extremely low ceiling, and which was humming along to music that was actively threatening to put him back to sleep. The second side wall was much shorter. More of a ledge than a wall. Wide ledge. Nice enough. Starting point, then: climb onto the nice wide black leather ledge wall.

Unfortunately, climbing was more easily thought than done. The road was hideously bumpy. Road. The road. Ohhh, well. That was a different thing altogether, wasn’t it? He would wait for a smooth patch, then. Wait, wait, wait. Wait. Waity wait. Oh, waiting was dreadful. Most dreadful thing to happen to him since the being dumped between the leather walls by the leather wall driving machine. It had a name. Definitely had a name. Thinking was hard during bumps. Thinking during bumps was dreadful. Almost as dreadful as…that music. Why was the tall wall humming to the music? Terrible music, that. It wanted to put him to sleep. Impertinent. Impertin…inence. That’s what it—

◈◈◈

Fire. It was him. There were no screams, no crashes, no sounds at all beside the crackling in his ears. But he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was coming from him. He was once cursed to bring humanity to the dangers of the world. Now he was cursed to bring the world to the dangers of humanity. There could be no other way. He was the beginning and the end, the darkness in the light. Everything burned around him, but he was not himself consumed. He was the final weapon. He was Hell.

◈◈◈

‘There you are, snug as a bug in a rug. Or, rather, snug as a snake in a…um…well. Snug, anyway. That’s the important bit.’ 

The flames diminished around him when the voice came. He was on a ledge, a nice wide one. Didn’t feel like leather; neither did the warm thing lying on top of him. More impertinence, but at least it was cozy impertinence this time. Couldn’t fight every battle or there’d never be time for non-battle things. None of which Crowley could currently name, but he was sure they were better than battle things. Must be. Hm. 

‘Now dear, if you would be so kind? You’re not exactly easy to transport in this iteration, and your human shape is better for drinking tea, so if you could…’ said the angel-person, who must be an angel if he knew about Crowley’s different Crowleifications…Crowleiferations? ‘I don’t have any clothes for you here, of course, given your penchant for willing them to be, but I do possess a nearly bottomless chest of blankets and quilts and throws and the like, and of course you would be welcome to anything in my armoire.’

Crowley blinked. The angel-person-angel talked a great deal for someone communicating almost nothing. Perhaps he was one of those hand gesture types. Crowley had spent a bit of time in Italy once or thrice. He liked the hand gesture types. And the pasta. Mostly the pasta. 

‘You want me to wot?’

‘Oh, good! You’re properly awake! Though you really ought to listen more carefully, I cannot repeat everything I say now, can I?’

Crowley shrugged, in as much as a snake could shrug, which was about as little as you would assume.

‘If you would be so kind, Crowley, please transform yourself into your human shape. I’ll bring you a hot cup of tea and a scone.’

He turned and walked out of the space with a sort of prim hopwiggle. There wasn’t much else for him to do, Crowley realized, before performing the requested transformation. It was much colder under such a thin top layer, but the blanket’s softness was multiplied. Colours were also much more existent in this state, which was a not insubstantial improvement. He didn’t know why the angel-angel-person hadn’t smited him yet. Smited? Smot…ten? He really should know that one. It would never do to ask. Either way, he hadn’t been re-damnated, and if it hadn’t happened by now, it was unlikely to happen at all. Probably. Was that math? No, couldn’t be. It was words. Words weren’t math. That would be mad. 

‘Ah, much better. Here we are,’ the angel-angel announced, setting a cup of steaming tea and a plate of scones on a small table Crowley had only just noticed. He sat in the chair that Crowley also only just noticed, wiggled his fingers above the scones as if performing a cheap magic trick, then took a bite. ‘Mhmm, mhm! Scrumptious, if I do say so myself. Which I do,’ he said conspiratorially. Crowley didn’t know how he had gone from a hole in the forest to being a co-conspirator over scrumptiousness, but it was warmer and drier and much less vibrationy here.

Crowley risked a bite of a scone. Hmm. Yes, alright. This place, whatever this place was, might have been marginally better than the forest. 

You know. 

A bit.

Chapter Text

He hadn’t thought. It was entirely unlike him not to think, but it was entirely unlike Crowley to eat his scones and drink his tea and fall asleep under his tartan throw on purpose. If you were being fair, which of course you always would be, you could see that it really wasn’t Aziraphale’s fault that, in that particular moment, he hadn’t been thinking. If he had been, he would never have done such an obviously careless thing. It wasn’t in his nature to be careless or unkind, especially where Crowley was concerned. He didn’t even know why he still had the things around. He hadn’t made a search for them, which he realised in retrospect he should very well have done, but hindsight being what it was…well. He hadn’t made a search then, and he hadn’t been thinking now, and that was the situation as it was. No getting around it. No getting under it. He would, as the song suggested, just have to go through it.

Only, what he was going through wasn’t his to go through. It was Crowley’s. Poor dear Crowley, who had been summoned off without his lunch to that miserable outdoorsy forest place. Poor dear Crowley, who had taken a knock to the head, or perhaps to the psyche, and fallen into a hole—literally and figuratively! Poor dear Crowley, who he had dragged unconscious and hissing all the way back to the Bentley and who, thank heaven, had slept soundly enough to be covered by an old carpetrugblanketponcho thing as they passed through the utter ridiculousness of the all-the-rest-of-Europe and United Kingdom border. Crowley, who he had bundled into, well, a bundle inside of the fabric thing and smuggled into the bookshop like a pirate sneaking off into the night. Except in instead of out. In broad daylight. And Crowley wasn’t quite stolen. Oh, but it would be fun to be a pirate…

But not now. Not while his uncharacteristic not thinking had led to this: Crowley, poor dear Crowley, grasping at Aziraphale’s shoulders so tightly that the fabric would need repair, knees folded up underneath him in a way that made very little sense to anyone who understood geometry the way Aziraphale so proudly did, eyes swollen half-shut from sobbing himself dry onto the aforementioned soon to be in need of repair shirt fabric. Crowley, who was in Aziraphale’s arms—something he had been dreaming of since the dawn of space, if he was quite honest, which he probably shouldn’t be—but in the most opposite, thoroughly wrong way.

And all because the power had gone out. 

Crowley hadn’t noticed the storm at first. It was only rain and a bit of wind, and tucked into the bookshop as they were, it was hardly audible. Aziraphale had been aware of it only because he was ferrying the replenished plate of scones back from the kitchen. (It wasn’t a kitchen technically speaking, but he wasn’t one to get hung up on technicalities where a good pastry was concerned.) He had noted the rain, and judged the ferocity of the wind to be minimal. Someone else might say he misjudged, but that someone would be incorrect. At the time of his judging, minimal was an accurate assessment, thank you very much. He couldn’t have known it would pick up suddenly. How could he? It wasn’t as though he had control over the weather. That would be preposterous. No being walking the earth had that type of power. 

Judgment or misjudgment, power or no, the storm did storm at its absolute stormiest in no time at all. Hail pelted the windows. The rain sounded like waves cascading over them in the ocean shallows. It would have been incredible, gorgeous, indulgent reading weather, had Crowley not dropped his half-full mug and begun gasping for air. The tea spill was less a concern than the hyperventilation, even for Aziraphale, who hated a stain with the passion of one thousand Lady MacBeths. The spot would not entirely out, but it would dry at his bidding, and that was good enough as he crossed the small space between them and wrapped Crowley’s shivering torso tightly in the second blanket from the back of the couch. Aziraphale was saying something reassuring, as he had grown so accustomed to doing over the years, when the lights, and indeed the whole neighbourhood, went dark. 

‘Now, there’s no need to worry,’ he had said in a voice too saccharine in retrospect, ‘we’re perfectly prepared for any eventuality. Do you remember the Blitz?’

Crowley answered by shaking harder beneath the hands pressing blankets even harder onto his shoulders. 

‘No? Well, we had a surprisingly lovely time, given the circumstances. Surprisingly lovely wine, too, I might add. In fact! Wait right here. I know just the thing!’ Aziraphale moved off into the darkness with the confidence of a man (he used the term loosely) who knew his surroundings down to the millimetre. Clinking down a set of glasses on the all but invisible table beside Crowley, he was even more impressed with himself than an observer might be, had there been an observer, and had they had night vision goggles about their person at the time. 

‘There! If I’m not mistaken, it’ll be the same vintage.’ He was not mistaken, but it would have been a brag just that side of pride to say so. ‘And for the piece de resistance: voila!’

That was it. That was the moment, as the match sparked off the box and the flame jumped to life before their eyes, that Crowley screamed. In all of their millennia on this planet, in all of the hours and minutes and seconds they had spent in one another’s company, Aziraphale had never, ever, not even once heard that sound. The match was extinguished and Aziraphale was on the sofa beside him in an instant, but the damage was done. Crowley, poor dear Crowley, was grasping, scrabbling, clawing at Aziraphale’s arms and back as if he were a shield against the worst terror imaginable. Or, perhaps, as if he were trying to drag Aziraphale away from it. 

Gauging time was not Aziraphale’s strong suit. He didn’t know how long Crowley shook and sobbed in his arms. He didn’t know how long until he ran out of tears, ran out of breath. He didn’t know how much of the night had passed by the time Crowley wore himself out and began drifting in and out of sleep still sitting upright, fingernails digging into the skin beneath Aziraphale’s ruined shirt. What he knew was that laying Crowley back onto the cushions was only possible if he went down with him. His poor exhausted demon would not let loose his grip, and Aziraphale feared that prying him off might set him off once more. 

The couch accepted a firmly whispered invitation to expand, and the tartan throw, overhearing the request, decided to behave in the same manner. The bookshop had always liked Crowley, Aziraphale thought, smiling lightly. He had even once had to talk it out of repainting itself purple, which he surmised to be an attempt at pleasing its nearly-constant but not-actually-if-you’ll-recall inhabitant.

No, Aziraphale mused, yawning. Not actually, but perhaps…(His eyelids fluttered closed, which was surprisingly pleasant, actually.) Perhaps…one day.

◈◈◈

Good Lord, what was that? Aziraphale’s brain raced into consciousness before his eyes could catch up. It couldn’t be an earthquake; London didn’t have earthquakes. Why were his eyes closed, anyway? Had he fallen asleep? Well he wasn’t asleep anymore, what with that violent shaking! Oh no, Crowley! Was Crowley alright? Could Crowley be—

‘No, n-nooo…’

Aziraphale’s eyes finally joined the rest of his attention. A frightened protest, a whimper really, was shivering its way out of Crowley’s mouth. Aziraphale’s arms were once again, or perhaps still, in his grip, and he was shaking like a leaf in a storm. Which he may very well have been in whatever foul dream was claiming him. 

‘T-the world…it can’t…you can’t take it…’

‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale whispered, placing one palm firmly against his ribcage. ‘Crowley, wake up.’

‘N-no, no more fire, no more f-please…I…I…no! NO!’

‘Crowley. I demand that you wake up this instant.’

His ‘I’m the Principality here and you will do as I say’ voice didn’t usually afford him more than an eyeroll and a lopsided curtsy, but the rising pitch of Crowley’s voice unnerved him enough to try. 

‘Oh no! N-no, angel…please don’t…not me, not…I have no place else to go…not the sword…not the…not—’ A garbled shriek punctuated the end of his plea,and Aziraphale couldn’t help himself: he began shaking back.

‘Crowley! Crowley, please! You must come back to me now. Come back, Crowley, Come back I say!’

Yellow eyes flew open with such force that they both landed on the floor with a painful thud. Crowley’s chest was heaving in a pattern not at all conducive to settling the nervous system. (Aziraphale never knew whether it was the sympathetic or parasympathetic that did the panicking. He had read about it once and knew it had to do with tigers, or lions, or something lurking in the bushes. None of that would help him now, though, even if he could remember it.)

‘Crowley?’ Aziraphale ventured, sitting up and taking a slender hand in his. ‘Crowley, are you quite alright?’

The rain had started again, lighter and more pitter-pattery this time around. Crowley turned away, rolling onto his side before dragging his body upright. He looked for all the world like he was about to vomit. Aziraphale wouldn’t blame him if he did so long as he managed not to hit the rug, already tainted as it was by the invisible eternal tea. His stomach seemed to hold, however, and he staggered in a rather waiflike, utterly un-Crowley way toward the front door of the shop. One weak hand draped itself over the door handle and tugged. Whether or not to follow him was not Aziraphale’s choice to make; his feet remained firmly planted where he had stood up beside the couch. 

The rain must have been falling on Crowley’s face with the way he leaned his head against the doorframe. Aziraphale tried not to think of the tears it could be concealing. He might as well try not to think about zebras. If there had been any wind, it would surely have hidden his voice away as well. Fortunately, this weather was more the movie scene type, where it served more as punctuation and underscoring than competitor to one’s words.

‘The centre of the fire, the blue bit. That’s the hottest part. It’s true for stars, too. The blue ones burn at the highest temperatures. I didn’t actually design it that way. It was an accident. But when it happened, it was beautiful and I-I couldn’t bear to change…’ He swallowed the last words, if there were going to be words there at all. ‘I knew the elements by name back then. Not the names they’ve given them down here, but the old ones. The first ones. It’s been too long now, I suppose, or maybe I’ve been careless with my memories. The Latin has stuck, thankfully. Do you know your Latin, angel?’ 

He didn’t pause for an answer, which was just as well. Aziraphale’s voice would have failed him.

‘Sulphur. To burn. That’s the blue flame at the heart of it all. No being, not a single one, was ever made to withstand that heat. We won’t die, your kind or mine. But we can hurt. We can suffer. We can fall. Did you know, angel, that if you fall hard enough, fast enough, far enough you ignite? There’s friction in space-time, all that dark matter rubbing against you, and eventually it catches, and poof—up you go, or down rather, in flames. 

‘I’ve wondered before now if that’s what set the lake boiling. Maybe the sulphur wasn’t heated. Maybe it was just there, minding its own business, and down came blazing match heads made of former angels, plunging in as if they had any business. I like the black wings, don’t get me wrong. Suit me, or at least the me that I aimed for when the dust cleared. Don’t know if I’ve become him yet. 

‘The wings, though, they’re good. But the scorch marks…have you ever had the feeling something was missing? I know there are holes, moth-bitten parts where Someone chewed away most of the important bits. There’s something else, though. I know it. Something soft and white, like a feather or…or…’

‘An angel?’ Aziraphale didn’t know how he’d come to be standing so close. It was simply what they had done. Well. What he had wanted to do. 

‘I don’t know what you haven’t done away with me. I know I don’t belong here, in this place.’

‘You’ve always been welcome here, Crowley. Haven’t I made you feel that way?’

‘Sometimes I’ve wondered if it wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d gone on my own. Jumped. Left. Sooner or later it’s always safer to leave.’

Aziraphale didn’t recognise his own voice when it came, hoarse and wracked with guilt as it was. ‘Why would it be dangerous to stay?’

Crowley turned his head, red hair plastered to his face with rain and tears. ‘You’re an angel. You know as well as I the curse laid on my head. Unforgivable, I am. A demon, now and for evermore.’

‘Still a demon, then? Aziraphale hadn’t thought it, hadn’t even felt it coming until it was out. He had always been the wrong shape for an angel, but he hadn’t felt it so acutely in years.

Crowley’s cheeks had sunken too far in. If he was biting them, he must have been drawing blood. Aziraphale never thought Crowley would be one to chase pain as a means of feeling. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was chasing it to drown the rest of the feeling out. He tilted his head back toward the street, eyes cast toward the pavement. 

‘What else would I be?’

Aziraphale felt it coming this time, shoved up his throat by mourning and grief in a desperate grasp for the not so distant past. He was powerless to stop it. No, he just didn’t want to.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered, the corner of his mouth twitching with horrible timing. ‘An aardvark?’

Crowley’s body folded in on itself and resumed its shaking. Yes, Aziraphale had made a life out of being the square peg, but as he wrapped his arms around Crowley unbidden, he began to lament each specific moment he had spent cultivating this in himself. Crowley shook harder in his arms, face pressed against his shoulder. 

‘Breathe. I know you don’t technically need it, but please.’

And Crowley did. He inhaled an awkward gasping lungful of air, and then exhaled in a way that stunned Aziraphale to his core: he laughed. 

Chapter Text

Crowley didn’t know what had come over him in that moment. It was the oddest possible thing the one hundred and five percent certainly an angel could have said to him, he reckoned. Yet for some reason, it nudged the soft white thing in, just a bit, from the edge of his mind. As for the laughing, who wouldn’t laugh when someone used the word aardvark in casual conversation? Only thing funnier than the word aardvark was an actual live aardvark. (If you’ve never seen one, you’ll just have to trust Crowley on this one. Rather well travelled, he was; he ought to know.)

Even more odd than the remark was the frenzy the angel kicked himself into once he’d let Crowley go. Lifted one finger in the air and said, ‘By Jove, I think I might just have it!’ Real old-timey sort, this one. Crowley was as wary of angels as any good demon would be. As wary as any bad demon would be, too, he figured, given he had been, by no official accounts but by his own private reckoning, rather crap at his job. He also wondered at the words filling his brain now, which seemed somehow slantier and more sandpapery than they had been during his soliloquy. Was it a soliloquy? No, it was a monologue. That was such a boring word, though. He’d call it a soliloquy, in the event anyone asked. Which they wouldn’t, as there was literally no one there. Welllll no one unless he included the angel, who was bustling back and forth amongst the book shelves like a…thing that had lost its…er…needed…for…thing. Alright, the words were slantier but also more not very good.

‘Kiki, that’s what they are,’ he said to the aforementioned no one, which he supposed meant he was, in fact, soliloquising. ‘Ha, there then. Good job, me.’

‘Crowley!’ came a call from somewhere in the over there part of the place. ‘Crow-Crowley! There you are!’ The angel ran—alright not ran, but he didn’t look the running sort, so perhaps for him it was a run—toward where Crowley had not moved more than the space required to shut the door. ‘Come my dear boy, sit. Yes, right here at my desk, that’ll do. Now,’ he paused, ostensibly for effect, ‘keep your eyes sharp and your wits sharper.’

‘That’s a turnip.’

‘Yes! But not just any turnip, oh no!’

‘Is there more than one kind of turnip? You don’t mean to say it’s a parsnip? Aren’t those the carroty-looking ones? The ghost carrots? Taste a bit of cinnamon somehow, don’t they? That’s not one of those. Nah, that’s just your bog standard run-of-the-mill turnip.’

The angel frowned. ‘Have you always been like this?’

‘Like wot?’ Crowley asked. He felt his eyebrows reaching higher than it seemed they should. Why were they doing that? Did he need to get them a sherpa and an oxygen tank to get back down?

‘Hmm.’ 

The angel’s hum was a rather disapproving one. Crowley didn’t know what he’d done to be disapproved of, he’d only asked a ques— awwww yeah, that’ll do it.

‘How about this.’ The angel slid an open book into his hands. ‘Does this perhaps ring any bells?’

‘No bells,’ Crowley answered, withdrawing slightly from the illustration of a guillotine in action, ‘but more than a few necks.’

‘This doesn’t make you peckish? Maybe for some crepes?’

‘Look, I don’t know what you take me for, but all that demons eating people’s souls business was a farce during the Inquisition and it’s a farce now.’

An aggravated sigh joined the disapproving hum in ‘sounds the angel made that Crowley made him make despite not understanding at all why they were made’ category. 

‘Inquisition. Nasty business. Still think we should have seen that whole disaster on the horizon.’

‘Aw, don’t feel bad, angel. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.’

Crowley grinned. He hadn’t been responsible for the French chop-o-matic or the Malleus Maleficarum, but Monty Python had been one of his, and he was damned—well, he was whatevered if he wasn’t going to take credit for it.

The hours wore on, as Crowley could see plainly through the windows despite the touch-and-go weather, and the angel (whose name he really ought to ask but didn’t because his brain said, ‘oh, no, can’t do that I’m afraid,’ and he was in no position to argue with such airtight logic) continued to pull out tchotchkes and photographs and books as if he expected something to happen on a world-altering scale. Crowley felt horribly sorry for him each time his hopes were dashed. He did seem a surprisingly nice fellow, with his kind eyes and tugged-upon waistcoat. And his hair, which was soft and white and fluffy and every time Crowley thought about touching it, that something-thing in his brain that was also soft and white and fluffy inched a bit further toward the middle. 

‘Ohh,’ the angel wailed at a failed attempt to draw some specific reaction to what could only be described as a playbill signed by William Shakespeare. ‘It’s no use, no use at all!’

Crowley wanted to ask, but as he was batting zero with that course of action, he decided to not. 

‘I’m tired and worn and…hungry. Crowley, why don’t you go have a walk around the bookshop or a nap on the sofa in the back. I’ll see to dinner.’

◈◈◈

Fire. It rose up around him. It was hungry and ravenous, just like them. He couldn’t tell if it was the hellfire grinning at him or the figures just beyond, but it was like being trapped in a horror movie. He would be lying if he claimed not to care for his own life; of course he did, everyone did. It was part of the fabric of being, whatever being amounted to these days. But his life was even more than his life here in this pillar of fire. His life was not only his own, and if he failed…if he failed…

◈◈◈

‘Crowley.’ 

There was a nudge against his shoulder, and that voice. That voice that was so close to something.

‘Crowley, wake up. Would you come with me? Please?’

He sat up to find the angel standing before him, gesturing at a pair of slippers by his feet. Crowley slipped them on and followed silently. He was led up the spiral staircase he’d seen but not really considered, and then toward the back wall of the upper floor. There was another staircase there. He couldn’t have known that, of course, but somehow it felt strange that he hadn’t. Up the stairs they went, to a landing only small enough for the angel to stop and unlock a door that simply did not make sense. The physics were fine, Crowley knew that much. But something he desperately wanted to call ‘the vibe’ was off.

‘You have a rooftop.’

The angel seemed sad, almost embarrassed. ‘Indeed I do.’

There was a blanket spread on the concrete patterned the same as the one downstairs. This one was larger, large enough for them both to sit on, and it was laid with food.

‘You’ve done a picnic?’

The angel stepped to the edge of the blanket and retrieved a handful of small items from a wicker basket. With little flicking motions, he switched them on one by one and placed them on the ground. He would keep the batteries going on his own, if need be; he would not make the same mistake twice. Without turning, he spoke, voice rough and thick.

‘I had promised you more.’

Crowley stepped up behind him on instinct, not knowing what he was meant to say, but sure he was meant to say something. But then it happened: the lights down the street went out. And the next few buildings, and the next. A waterfall of darkness cascaded through Soho until there was nothing left but electric candlelight and stars.

‘I’ll turn off the world for you,’ the angel said in a tone soaked in defeat. ‘We can still run, if you like. Alpha Centauri, or further, if it helps.’

He didn’t turn around. He didn’t see the tears rolling heavy and slow down Crowley’s cheeks. The tears Crowley almost almost understood.

‘When I’m up in the stars…’

The angel tugged at his waistcoat, examined the loose button. ‘I deserve that I suppose.’ He pulled at the air as though switching off an old lamp. The food, the blanket, the candles all disappeared as though they never had been. ‘My life without you means nothing. And I…have been selfish. The truth is, I had never even considered that perhaps what is best for you is…no, no that’s not fair either. I’m sorry. I ought to shut my mouth and—’

Crowley has spun him around so quickly he stumbles, hands clutching his shoulders with a ferocity he didn’t know he still possessed. 

‘What did you say?’

‘I-Well…I’m going on too much. I should simply shut my mouth—’

‘—and die already.’

The sound that came out of the angel’s throat was that of a dying man. It was ripped from deep inside him, wretched and wet. For all the celestial energy coursing through him, he looked for all the world like a plain, simple, heartbroken man.

But Crowley did not see that. He didn’t hear the sound. He could take in nothing but the roar of hellfire in his ears, a vicious noise bringing him to his knees, hands wrapped around his ears as though he had any power to stop it.

‘That’s what he said to you. There were flames. There were flames and he…he…’

‘Crowley, I don’t understand. Who said that? Was there someone in the forest or—’

‘You would have died. You would have been gone. And I…if I hadn’t been able…oh, angel!’

If there had been any light, Crowley might have felt the darkness pulling in at the edges of his vision. At least from where he was, he didn’t have far to fall.

◈◈◈

A blaring tenor slices open Crowley’s consciousness before anything else. 

‘Turn that bloody racket off,’ he slurs, shielding his eyes until he’s sure the lights in the room are dim enough. 

‘Well, dear, I thought you would like it. I did find it in your car.’

‘My car? When were you in my car?’ He sat up, blinking his surroundings into focus. This was a bed. This was not his bed.

‘I do hope it’s to your liking,’ Aziraphale said in that ‘I have done a thing which may be a good thing or may be a bad thing and really isn’t value in the eye of the beholder’ tone he sometimes had. ‘I had it in just for the occasion.’

‘Had it in? What d’you mean “had it in”? You can’t just have a bed in.’ There was an unusually significant weight across his legs, apparently caused by a tartan quilt. Hideous thing it was. He’d have to take care never to tell Aziraphale how much he liked it.

‘Well, er, where it has been brought in from is not important at the moment. How are you feeling, Crowley? Do you…recognise me?’

‘What kind of question is that?’ Crowley asked half-seriously. ‘Do I recognise you?’ He turned to address the quilt, which seemed a far more reasonable companion than Aziraphale at the moment. ‘Do I recognise him? Course I recognise him. Been in love with him for six thousand bloody years.’

The quilt, quite unexpectedly, responded by being soaked in tea. Looking up, it became obvious that it was in fact Aziraphale’s tea, which made marginally more sense, that had been spit out all over the quilt, which was actually rather unfortunate. 

‘Oh. I, uh. I said that last bit out loud then, I suppose?’

‘You foul creature!’ Aziraphale stood, tossing his cup and saucer to the carpet and climbing onto the quilt.

‘You’re going to want to do something about that, you know how you hate a stain.’

‘You absolute,’ Aziraphale continued, crawling forward to loom over Crowley, who was now thinking the stain might be the least of his worries, ‘fiend of the underworld.’

Crowley’s eyes rolled of their own accord, in as much as eyes had their own accord, which was far more than you might suspect. He also smirked an incredible smirk—a real smirk for the ages, that one. 

‘Angel, if you’re going to tell me to get behind you again…’

‘Oh no, you dreadful serpent,’ Aziraphale threatened, looking him up and down as though he were freshly stewed lamb curry. ‘Not this time.’