Chapter Text
In a lot of ways, the flat hasn't felt the same after Shax tossed it back to Crowley when Hell called her down. And maybe it's that it isn't the same space from before, no matter how much Crowley tries. A few snaps of fingers bring the old arrangement of furniture and trinkets back again, but they smell wrong, feel wrong. They don't sit right how they used to. Nothing sits right how it used to. Not in the walls, or the black marble counters, between the withering pots in the atrium. Not between Crowley's frail ribs.
There's no trace of reassurance in the memories that soak the walls, the in-between lines across the rafters, in the folds of his sheets. Spots that had seen him dream of a future in which the angel and him could be together, beyond Hell's chains and Heaven's demands. Angles that had held the brunt of his yearning, held Crowley upright in the long years where the distance had brought him to his knees, twisted the knife in that soft underbelly Crowley would never admit was so easily bruised.
Wretched creature full of a love that would never be wanted, just like himself. Damned with a heart that beat when it shouldn't. Unfit, broken and discardable.
Aziraphale had been very fucking clear.
Crowley knows he should've moved out, but he's weak for these scraps, wants to preserve these four walls that are concrete and strong, just like he isn't, have something familiar to sink into. But most of all because he refuses to give up any part of himself to escape a wretched dream.
The flat, the Bentley, they had been the choices of a demon that loved Earth. Someone who picked up threads of humanity to shape himself to an image of his own making. More than a demon, and never a man, not an angel but just – himself.
So, no. Fuck, no, he won't surrender his bits to a grief that's trying to undo him. One last ditch attempt at forgetting, that's all he needs.
London calls him back from out the windows with its noises blared out through fog, rustling Crowley barely off his alcohol-daze. His attention wobbles addled by all the wine bottles he's drank but he tries to focus.
The pen slips from his slack grasp before he can push the tip to the paper. The sheet already has all the squiggly curves and signs that something like this requires. He just has to state his business.
Frontal, center, clear. Add his true name to brooch the deal closed while the black candle burns like raw carbon, onyx-shiny. The shadows slither over the paper like an impatient snake, and Crowley's free fingers draw back to his own sigil.
Demon.
Unforgivable and forgotten, but filled with the understanding of knowing he wouldn't change a single choice that brought him to who he was now. Jaded and jagged, bruised on spots he'd always been too proud to show to anyone. Desperately hopeful to let Aziraphale tuck against all his raw lines.
And for quite a long time, next to Aziraphale, it had been almost good enough. To fall for an angel that Crowley had been too naïve hoping could love him back, wishing for it until Aziraphale had finally refused him with all its letters.
And the reality of it had hurt more, because deep down Crowley had known it, felt it in his bones. He’d repeated it to himself in broken syllables, and harsh vowels, in a hundred iterations that had filled the empty space where his heart thud, percussive and violent.
You'll never be enough.
He swallows, lids fluttering closed when the pad of his thumb rubs under the graze of long lines of sweat-damp hair that curl over his sigil.
Four years ago and memories flash up like a photo well kept, stunning in its colours.
" It's lovely, this. I think I never told you.” The angel had brushed a warm thumb over the curlicue of black ink next to his ear. It'd been a shaky brush, hesitant. They had been hours away from facing destruction, with hope waning and the world hushed around them, as if to conceal them from searching eyes.
Crowley had bitten back a shudder, heart wild. " We should get ready." No more words. Because dawn was in the reaches, their fates hovering on the edge of danger. They hadn't been free yet, and Crowley hadn't wanted the angel to regret his words, or to be punished by an off-handed remark about a demon he should've destroyed instead of allowed closer.
Aziraphale had dropped his fingers, finally, mouth falling a bit slack around a breath. And Crowley had gritted his teeth while they trekked through their trials, until they dragged themselves back to their bench. Stupidly, he’d hoped for some word after the Ritz, and when it never came, he'd slowly fall into the realisation that danger can nudge you to cling to any sort of companionship, can twist your perception for good.
Of course Aziraphale hadn't meant anything by it, and it was villanous to pretend he had.
Crowley's hand trembles, mind alcohol-numbed, body wretched. Not that sobering up crosses his mind. He wants his next action to be narrowed down to the residual pain that five bottles of wine usually bring to the fore. He wants to be pressed down to nothing but jagged ache, and the raw hollow of that carved out space in his chest.
He wants his next choice to be guided by the heart– useless, cracked – even if his own brain rebels.
It's been a year or two– something in between, since Aziraphale left. Counting months that heap on one another. Crowley's soaked his hours in wine, napped for weeks, tried to burn away the hot, messy crush of the angel's damp lips from his own, razing the edges of the memory with the wood-spark of whisky. He's tried to bury Aziraphale's words under the sharp angles of his own shattered hopes, take them out under the noise of his beating heart, make them dissolve until nothing's left.
His eyes still feel raw even if he doesn't remember the last time he's felt his lashes heavy with wetness. The draft of air over the damp skin of the back of his hand.
Enough time has passed to know Aziraphale isn't returning. That he's burned all his bridges, and Crowley with them; ground it all to ashes after.
Aziraphale had left no room for doubts.
Because Crowley could've flayed himself open, wrench his ribs to show off his heart– he could've dined Aziraphale, and wined him, softened the corners of their lives to build a home that one day both could've made theirs. Crowley could've given himself away, as a demon shouldn't, part by part, until his own corporation succumbed to the blood loss.
None of that would've changed the fact that his sinews and flesh were dipped in sulfur, that there was a crack running along him from where he's patched up his pieces after being tossed and shattered. Making himself whole in the only way he knew. Jagged and irregular, charcoal-smudged, cutting where Aziraphale might have wanted him soft.
Aziraphale had wanted him unbroken, and Crowley doesn't know how to change that, doesn't know how to be something else.
He has nothing else of worth to give.
His hand keeps messing up the words over the paper. He's forgotten how fingers move, how the letters are supposed to angle and flow to form sentences.
Make…
Four letters, easy enough.
Crowley's heart thumps.
The tips of his fingers smudge black on the running ink of the ball pen when he lifts it to push the tip down.
Me…
Almost done. Just two more words. At the margins, the signs glow reddish, bounding his wish. It's old, worn magic that no human remembers and demons won't practice.
Forgetting is a gift earned in suffering, or a curse bestowed with no mercy. Those who seek it rarely find it, and those who do, spend the rest of their lives with the sharp teeth of doubt around the holes left in them.
Crowley's body gives way, lax against the parquet, cheek cold where it rubs on the ground. He tips his face up searching for another lungful. He should sober up.
He wobbles trying to kneel up higher to move his hand. But he's drunk to his arse and his eyes keep slipping closed, body collapsing against the stark herringbone. He can't remember the order of sounds, how the loop goes…
F
o
He wants to sleep. Crowley viciously needs to shut his eyes, sockets pulsing. He needs to stop hurting. On the knees. In the undefinable hollow where his heart lives.
r
g
The living room is starting to blur black at the edges. He could do this tomorrow. Pad himself up in courage instead of wine or whisky. Crowley is starting to fall asleep, and he can't fight it.
He won't fight it. The non-thinking state of dreams has always been a balm.
As an afterthought, his hand moves.
e–
A
z–...
The pen falls from Crowley's fingers and rolls under the sofa.
There's a dull glow rising in intensity, but Crowley can't keep his eyes peeled open. His marrow thrums, ground warming under his body.
He doesn't care. Resting is… resting is what he needs, the only moment where he can truly forget each barbed word Aziraphale had thrown in his direction.
A dry, cracked sound slips from his mouth.
Crowley loosens each joint and tight muscle, limbs lazy where he's sprawled untidily. Ignoring wholly that sizzle of glittering magic that will fade with the hours after a botched spell.
Whatever happens– he can deal with it tomorrow.
He's already snoring when the paper burns to ashes.
Blink after blink, the scurrying shadows don't change from where they scrunch, folding over the mess of Crowley's flat. Lining up the sharp angles of the dusty coffee table, flickering when the curtains move and light filters in to highlight the mess of what should be unfinished magic.
The paper isn't anywhere but Crowley doesn't think about it a lot. He must've pushed it somewhere while he rolled around in his sleep.
He has no idea how long he's been lying on the floor after passing out. Three days? Four? Two hours? He smacks his lips to find them dry but not flinty. Definitely less than a week without anything liquid going down his throat.
Judging by the grey light and the soft burr of cars still distant, London must be on the brink of awakening. Just another dawn equally bleak than the million that came before.
He doesn't want to lever up. Wants to keep sleeping and hiding the yellow of his eyes from the world, from Heaven, from Hell even, be just Crowley .
He's about to zone out again, when there's a loud rattle on the front door.
That makes him spring up, coil up in tension that gathers in his joints and behind his knees. Ready to run away.
No one knows this flat.
Correction.
No one who would visit him knows this flat. Not Maggie or Nina, not Muriel nor Anathema or that Pulsifer boy. These days Hell's pretending he doesn't exist. And if Shax were to visit him, she would've appeared in the middle of the living room without giving a single fuck about human things like privacy or the fear of watching your coworker’s balls to the last pube. No, knocking on a door is a human custom that speaks of manners.
His innards shake when a thought flits through his mind.
Aziraphale knows this flat. Has knocked on its door a hundred times over to pick him up for galas and dinners along centuries that now seem dust beneath Crowley's boots.
No. No, it can't be. That's pure wishful thinking.
The angel’s a million miles away, in another life, in another reality where Crowley's been nothing but a convenient ally he doesn't need anymore.
It can't be the angel, can it?
Can it?
In the hundred years he's had this flat, Shax’s interregnum notwithstanding, not a single human has crossed his door, nor visited him for pleasure. His, always a realm infernal, that no one else but an angel had ever dared to wade through.
The door rattles again with far more frenzied knocks. In Crowley’s ears, the hinges rattle.
His heart is beating in every crease of his body where the skin is thin and vulnerable. Neck, arm pits, thighs, wrists. Pleading to be left out of his body, to give up. He doesn't want to admit how badly his hand shakes, clenching and unclenching where the fingers are supposed to curl around the doorknob.
If it's Aziraphale… if …
His breath is a chaos of rough inhales and shivery exhales.
Crowley pads up forward, with dread and anticipation brewing beneath his tongue.
A zing of power runs along his spine.
He pulls the door open and feels the breath he doesn't need puffing out in a choked off noise. His belly twists, pulleyd up by a hundred different emotions that well up from behind his ribs and froth up everywhere.
Throat, lungs, mouth, brain.
Heart. That knocks and tips over spilling his heartbeats for everyone to listen to their ruinous tempo.
It cannot be.
Az–
Aziraphale. Eyes equally blue, pouty mouth just as pink, even if shaded by a full beard, hair oddly combed into order.
It's him, slightly different but still him, and Crowley's belly fills with a leaden weight.
“Oh, my darling boy, there you are!”
Crowley's crushed by a soft, bulky body and the lace of thick arms finding the curve of his waist to hold him better. He's tugged into the stifling air of the flat, while the door is pushed closed. There's so much angel to cling to, and enjoy, to appraise as he hasn't never before, not even that last afternoon. His fingers clench into that strange brownish, worn coat he's never seen the angel wear over a cream turtleneck. Crowley sinks into the hot fabric while his mouth can't help but slide along the curve of one pale ear.
He's shaking, because he's dreamt of this, of Aziraphale finding his way back to choose him above everything in a way that's indisputable. So Crowley could brush fingers along the much-loved lines of his face and safekeep them, could yell at him and kiss him and yell at him again for being such a bastard– for leaving, for leaving him, for wanting a version of him Crowley could never give him.
But this silent onslaught rends him apart, cutting deeper by the flurry of words he has stored within ready to spill. Where does it leave them? He's still a demon, he hasn't – would never change, there's no changing that.
Crowley doesn't know what to do, or what to say, except give soft thready noises, tucked into that tight embrace for as long as he can.
He wheels back giving clumsy steps towards the sofa while the angel clings to him tighter, moves broad hands across his body proprietary and knowing, finding the curve of Crowley's neck with his mouth just to breathe him in.
Sure, steady, commanding.
As if he had done this a hundred times before and knew Crowley would always follow his lead. Would tip his neck to shiver long with each slip of mouth. Would spread his thighs wider to allow him closer.
How could Crowley ever resist him?
Aziraphale pushes him flat on the sofa and with a desperation that Crowley feels in the bite of those manicured nails in his scalp, kisses him, pushing their mouths together messy and hurried.
It unravels him in broken parts, when Crowley had taken months to sew back together all the open wounds their last kiss had left torn. He can't stop it, won't stop it even if each nudge of warm lips skewer him, his own mouth falling open in reflexive want.
His whole self sparks when their chests are flushed, like their lips, when Aziraphale dips a tongue past his mouth to taste him like a man starving. After millenia of having his wish living on the edge of his skin, Crowley's finally kissing the angel, letting him do as he wants, to damp his lovely mouth on each slip and push of red lips. He could forget eras with Aziraphale's hand in his hair, the other clutching at his bare hip below his black shirt. Crowley could live unafraid in this kiss that doesn't hold a single sharp edge, unlike last time, that buzzes lovely and sweet when Aziraphale crushes a whine back into Crowley's mouth.
There's salt in Crowley's lips.
Aziraphale breaks apart, gasping loudly, mouth pulled down and brows furrowed. Despairing in each gesture. “I couldn't find you when I woke up and for a moment I thought Hell had dragged you back despite our arrangement.” His thumbs, squarish and soft, rub over the warmth of Crowley's cheeks. “I thought I had lost you!”
Crowley blinks against the burn of wanting to rein his own tears back. It's Aziraphale. Everything else could fall away into oblivion.
But his essence ruffles up when he stares at Aziraphale intently. It's him with a different hairdo and a face full of beard, but there's also a glint on Aziraphale's left ear Crowley hadn't noticed. A small, gold earring like a loop held there.
When did Aziraphale pierce his ear?
“Angel?” Crowley knows he's frowning when he should be grateful.
Aziraphale pulls back to regard Crowley with a bit more inches between them. His pale brows dip. “Crowley? What's wrong, dearest? Have you been crying?”
A frisson of steel slithers beneath his words.
Crowley shakes his head. “No.” A beat of silence. Then, a necessity to be truthful despite himself, “Not today, at least.”
Aziraphale pulls entirely away, until Crowley can resettle sitting on the sofa while the angel folds next to him. His kind, round face sharpens. He's never seen the angel sporting that shade of anger before.
When he speaks, Aziraphale's voice grates out with fury, “Who harmed you?”
It runs down Crowley's veins like gunpowder. Has he forgotten? Doesn't he know? It's been a year or maybe a bit more, but he can't believe that their last disagreement had slipped so easily off his mind.
You, Crowley wants to answer, but it feels pointless. He doesn't want to bring that past back now. He shrugs. “No one. ‘S fine, the weather makes me maudlin, that's all.”
Aziraphale lifts a hand to tuck one line of Crowley's hair behind his ear. “You look… strange. Your hair is quite longer, and… you haven't worn anything like this before.”
He tugs gently at Crowley's grey sweatpants and black tee.
Okay, that gives Crowley a huge fucking pause. He's worn this shirt once or twice while the angel was around. It makes no sense for Aziraphale to not recognise it.
But whatever it is, there's a more pressing question bubbling up in his throat, crowding there. “Aziraphale. What are you doing here? Why are you back?”
The angel, once more, seems to be utterly puzzled. Brows curving down even lower. “Back? Back from where? I'm here because I was worried sick about you! You left the cottage without telling me you were going to visit your old flat.”
A weird, slithering rasp of cold moves up Crowley's spine. “Uhn. What cottage?”
“Crowley.” Aziraphale's face scrunches, tension gathering around his mouth and eyes. “This isn't funny. Come off it.”
There's something warm in the back of Crowley's mind, like white noise that if he strains could mean words in a language he doesn't understand.
Phantom ripples in a distant lake.
His face must show the shock of his mind because Aziraphale follows, “Our cottage? In the South Downs? Where we've been living together for the last four years?”
Crowley's sure he blinks, but the rest of the world falls away to an ache that shifts into hope, leapfrogs to absolute horror inside his chest.
Because the paper burned, he's sure of it, and he has no idea of the command that he wrote there that he sealed with his name, pre-written as an insurance that had become ruin.
He's fucking warped realities, torn asunder time.
His hands push and dig into his loose hair, until his scalp screams.
Until he is screaming. “Oh, fuck. Oh my god!”
Aziraphale’s eyes go very wide. “Crowley?”
Crowley's heart gallops, and he licks his lips thrice over. His fingers tremble, tongue sticking to his palate before he can manage to push out, “Aziraphale– I'm very sorry to break this to you, but I think… I'm not the Crowley you're looking for.”
All the heat and warmth, the rose wash drains off Aziraphale's face. “ What?”
Fucking botched magic.
“I think… I think you have the wrong demon.”