Chapter Text
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Crowley had to leave the Bentley in a gravelled space above the beach, a patch just off the road that seemed to serve as some sort of temporary parking area. It's currently half overgrown with grass and weeds, and he thinks that says something about how often this part of the coast is visited. It's not all that surprising, the view from above reveals that the beach is small, and the rocks that meet the sea are jagged and slippery. It's not exactly a thriving tourist spot. The path down to the sand is a zig-zag wooden staircase, the railing worn soft and smooth under the curious touch of his hand. It's followed by a fair distance of grassy dunes that finally slope into pale, windblown sand. Neither of which Crowley is entirely happy about tromping over in his boots, which on most days aren't boots at all. Honestly, if they had just been boots he'd probably be even more annoyed, the combination of salt water, stones and sand would likely be the end of them.
"You had to go and put yourself in the middle of nowhere, didn't you, angel?" He's keeping a firm grip on the wine bottle and the box of hand-crafted chocolates he's holding, but the wind and the spray of slightly damp, salty air is certainly not helping his bid to keep them pristine. No, his own occult power is doing that job for him. Still, if the angel wants to live like he's in a gloomy romance novel, taking care of a lighthouse for the descendant of someone he probably only vaguely remembers, who is Crowley to argue.
After all, it's not like he hasn't indulged the odd human lifetime's worth of his own strange whims over the years. Some of which he'd found a measure of satisfaction in, but the rest… a history of regrets and bad decisions.
He and Aziraphale had spent a fair amount of time together after they'd averted—or at least helped avert—the end of the world. Crowley hadn't been inclined to complain about their new normal, far from it, but the freedom to just inhabit each other's spaces without constantly looking over their shoulders had taken some getting used to. Six thousand years of caution, and paranoia, and performance, was no small thing to set aside, but Crowley had been more than up to the challenge. Still, Aziraphale's sudden desire for a coastal view and a misty atmosphere had seemed like a good opportunity for Crowley to go off and tie up a few of his own loose ends. Also to put some worst-case-scenario plans in motion, just in case anyone from Heaven or Hell should decide it was eventually worth coming after them again.
Though the angel didn't need to know about that last part. He'd only worry, and they'd both had more than enough of that.
Crowley can't pretend that the whole idea of this seaside getaway hadn't amused him though, the picture of Aziraphale manning a lighthouse by himself, probably while wearing a chunky knit sweater for the aesthetic, looking off towards the sea, eating scones and reading too much maudlin poetry. Sparing the odd moment to keep the light turning, doing other lighthouse related things—Crowley will admit he's not an expert on the profession.
It had felt important for him to take some time to himself, or if not important maybe healthy? Though he's honestly not sure if the word even applied to them. But the angel is the one making decisions about what he does with his life now, no one from upstairs gets to choose for him. Crowley had figured his new independence was worth encouraging, as much as he'd thought his choice of vacation spot sounded dull in the extreme. Aziraphale hadn't invited him along, or made that face he knows so well, the sideways pout and earnest eyebrows that are asking without asking, a suggestion that perhaps he should invite himself along. So Crowley had wished him a good journey and sent him off with some wine and a book, as a good friend does.
He isn't going to pretend he didn't think about him though, that he didn't wonder what Aziraphale had been doing with himself out here on his own. How many extra books he'd brought with him. Whether he'd actually done any lighthouse related tasks, or instead spend the whole five months reading and letting a miracle take care of it all.
Crowley had missed him though.
Which was why he was now standing on a beach, in unsuitable boots, looking up at the towering structure on a jutting edge of the coastline. The lighthouse tower is white, but it's more of a bleached old white than anything bringing to mind a lick of paint, years of silt and salt weathering it almost smooth. The solid base is widened by a structure that's clearly supposed to be a living space, though Crowley can tell that the interior will be small. It narrows as it rises, empty space giving way to the remains of a ringed staircase, single pane windows dotted up the side, a platform ringing the tower two thirds of the way up, before opening out for the cap of the light. Which is currently still and dark in favour of the notoriously unpredictable British sunshine.
Can't have a gloomy romance novel with only one person.
Crowley tells himself firmly to shut up.
There's a path, though granted it's mostly just small pebbles that have been packed in by time and what looks like the later addition of a wooden border. An attempt at holding the sand at bay long enough to send new blood into the place. Crowley heads for the doors, giving a tentative nudge at the building's exterior to check if Aziraphale has put up any defences to ward off intruders. Or sea monsters. Though those have all been quiet since Armageddon. Instead, he finds the whole place inviting in its openness, not a shimmer of a ward up. As if he might possibly even be expected?
There's no reason for Aziraphale to have thought he might drop by. He didn't call first. But it wouldn't be the first time Crowley's left a metaphysical door open for the angel to sense him coming. He doesn't bother to hide his aura from Aziraphale at all anymore, let the angel know he was getting a visitor either way, hopefully the surprise will be a welcome one.
The door is small and old, but it swings open easily, and without much noise, when Crowley puts weight on the handle. His entrance leaves the sun to stream in behind him, throwing the shadow of his body across the stone floor.
"Aziraphale, I've come bearing—" The wine bottle hits the stone with a crack and rolls away, the chocolates thumping down after them to scatter across the floor.
The crumple of beige clothing against tacky red stone is enough to have Crowley there in an instant. After five months of not seeing him, the sight couldn't have been more of a shock. Aziraphale is lying a dozen feet inside, as if he'd fallen on the grey tiles, one of his legs at an awkward angle, his hand flung outwards, a spray of red droplets around it as if the back of his fingers had hit hard enough to split his knuckles. His eyes are closed, his face pale, but he's still breathing, he's still alive.
Crowley's on his knees next to him, close enough to see more clearly how badly hurt the angel is.
There's a gash on his cheek and his temple, as if he was struck by flying glass, and a trail of blood from his nose has pooled in the shallow of his upper lip before rolling down his jaw to make a half-dried puddle on the floor. His familiar coat is spread around him, the lining crumpled and torn, the collar of it and the front of the angel's shirt is red fading to brown, and a careful examination reveals it's blood running from a wound on the side of Aziraphale's head.
Crowley touches his cold skin, and there's something so wrong about how lifeless he feels.
"Aziraphale." His hand slides over the angel's face, finding all the minute touches of life, which is barely a relief considering. How long had the angel been lying here alone? "Aziraphale, wake up."
As far as Crowley knows, aside from Armageddon, Aziraphale has never been discorporated. He intends that to be a fact which will not change if he has any say in it. Healing people via occult powers isn't impossible, it's really just a matter of fixing what's broken, replacing skin and muscle, increasing blood flow. It can be messy and painful but it gets the job done. He's never had cause to be so grateful that an angel's corporation is not so holy as to be outside of his ability to help.
There's no one else here, Crowley belatedly checks the entire building and finds it empty save for the two of them. The scatter of twisted metal, screws and chips in the stone floor suggests that the staircase leading to the floor above broke away from the wall, and sent Aziraphale plummeting down.
But thinking it in his head, he still doesn't quite believe it.
He looks up, and sure enough there's a gap in the metal stairs, halfway to the divide in the floor. A dangle of barely hanging-on steps, cracked brickwork, and a snapped section of rail. Clear evidence of an accident that shouldn't under any circumstances have taken an angel's feet out from under him. This doesn't make sense.
"Aziraphale, wake up, damn it." The words are harsh, and there's a flavour of desperation to his voice, but he feels like that's fair under the circumstances.
The eyelids pinch in, and then slowly open. Aziraphale's eyes are glassy and unfocused, in a way that suggests he's coming back from somewhere far away, and it's not a thought that reassures him. Crowley finds it impossible not to lay his hands on either side of his face, to try and sink some of his infernal heat into him. This is the coldest he can remember the angel being, and that's including the time he stayed out in the rainstorm on the deck of the Ark, conflicted in a way that had left Crowley hesitant to try and offer comfort. Their friendship had been so new then…
But they've had thousands of years to learn each other better.
"There you are, bless it, angel, you scared me to death."
"Crowley?" His name is confused, as if for a moment Aziraphale doesn't know who he is.
"Aziraphale, you hit hard by the look of it, I'm going to heal you, it might sting a bit—"
"Crowley, how did you get in?" Aziraphale's fingers scratch at his sleeve for a handhold, then tug, as if to pull himself up and see the door at Crowley's back, but he clearly doesn't have the energy for it. "I couldn't get out, I couldn't—there was no door." There's a vague air of betrayal under the insistence. But that just adds more questions.
"Aziraphale, what happened here? The stairs are broken, but—"
"No, no." The angel stops listening to him, his fingers twisting in Crowley's jacket, bunching the fabric and leaving bloody prints in the depths of it. "You have to keep the light on, whatever you do you can't let it go out, you can't, Crowley, please, please." Aziraphale's shaking, sudden and hard, his hairline damp, fresh blood spilling from his nose and across his lip. It's red and human, and he honestly doesn't know if that reassures him or not. But it means, at least, that the damage is to the corporation. It's just surface damage. As long as the angel doesn't discorporate then everything will be fine.
Crowley is going to keep repeating that to himself until he believes it.
"Aziraphale, there's no one here but the two of us."
"No." The word is instant, as if Aziraphale knows better, and the breath he draws in is rough. It's clearly a struggle to get words out, eyes still not focusing properly on Crowley's face, instead he seems distracted by the space around them, a quiet, restless panic that Crowley has never seen from him before. "The light, the light has to stay on, it must stay on."
"It's alright," Crowley tells him, and finds himself lifting a hand and using a thumb to carefully wipe the trail of blood from beneath his nose, and then the curve of his lip. The sight of it on the angel's face is wrong in a way that he can't abide. "It's alright, angel."
"No, you can't let the light go out at night." Aziraphale pants a breath as if even speaking is exhausting him. "Promise me."
Crowley frowns, because Aziraphale has never extracted a promise from him before. He's never demanded something that Crowley had always given freely. What could be so dire that he would need to do so now?
"Alright, I promise, I promise, I won't leave, I'll keep the light on."
Aziraphale gives a low sob of something that feels like relief, before his whole body goes limp in Crowley's arms.
Crowley has a moment of fear so sudden and so sharp that he doesn't breathe, hand moving instinctively beneath Aziraphale's coat to press down over his shirt and waistcoat, feeling the jumpy but reassuring thud of his heartbeat inside his corporation. He's still here. Aziraphale is still here with him.
"I won't leave," he says again. But there's no reply.
The lighthouse is small enough that he spots the bedroom immediately, it's a small room built beneath the winding shape of the spiral staircase. It's the only room here, save the small space by the door which he suspects contains a tiny bathroom. The rest is taken up by a kitchenette on one side, which looks to have barely been introduced to electricity, with a small but solid table and two chairs. On the other side, there's a bookcase and an armchair, making up the smallest living area, though he expects it had everything Aziraphale needed.
There's no one else here, it's just the two of them. He checks again to make sure. There is no one, no occult or ethereal presence, no one living, dead, or undead.
"How did you fall?" Crowley can't help the thread of demand that creeps into the words, though his hold is still gentle. Because it should have been impossible. Aziraphale should have been able to catch himself, or heal himself, or shift the world so he'd never fallen in the first place. "How the blessed hell did you fall from a staircase?"
It's clear he's not getting an answer any time soon. The most important thing right now is getting Aziraphale somewhere safe and warm. Crowley takes a second to mutter a quick apology, before sliding his arms under the angel's knees and back, carefully lifting him off the stone floor and letting the weight of him tip gently against his chest.
This is the first time he'd ever properly felt the angel's weight, six millennia of careful nudges and leans and the occasional brush of elbow or hand—and now he's listening to the creak of an old building and holding the full weight of Aziraphale against his chest, and also a dozen unanswered questions.
"You'll be alright. I've seen you take an arrow and be nothing but 'mildly inconvenienced,' a little head bump isn't going to take you out." He realises he's speaking softly against the fluffed curls of Aziraphale's hair and makes himself stop. "You'll be fine. I'll fix you up and then you can rest for a few hours and tell me what the hell happened here." Crowley kicks open the bedroom door, finding a small, cosy space that he doubts the angel had used for anything other than the lighthouse keeper aesthetic of spending long chilly nights tucked up in the floral patterned bed. It smells like his cologne, and the tea he no doubt enjoyed while tucked up inside.
But this time it's not just for show. It's not some affectation.
He lays the angel on the bed, then gently removes his shoes and socks, because he'll catch hell if Aziraphale discovers that he'd put him to bed in all his clothes. He's gentle with the coat, though the collar of it is now smeared dark and stiff with blood. There are more spots of it on the shoulder and down the back and he can't leave it like that. Even if doing anything to the angel's clothes while he's not awake to consent leaves him feeling a frustrated sort of guilt. He snaps his fingers to erase the bloody streaks and drops that had seeped into the material, with any luck Aziraphale will be so embarrassed at making Crowley worry that it will slip his mind to wonder whether they'd even been stained in the first place.
But Aziraphale himself is another matter. He may be sleeping now but his face is still an unhealthy shade of pale, blood still colouring his hair, his cheek and the slope of his neck. Crowley can see all the small ways his corporation is damaged now, the fractures, gashes, and bleeding beneath the skin. Even though they can do it just as easily as angels, demons aren't technically supposed to heal, not unless it was absolutely necessary. Situations could arise where someone was too badly injured to speak. Where a little too much exuberance risked a human dying before they'd outlived their usefulness, or before whatever cruel misery was planned could befall them. So, yes, a demon could fix you, though usually only in the most basic sense of the word, it was done hastily and with little care. It wasn't a pleasant experience—though Crowley had no intention of treating Aziraphale the same way. But he's still a demon and he's not sure there won't be some natural resistance… which is to say, there's a non-zero chance that the angel was going to fight him the whole way.
"Can't leave you like this though, can I?" He finds that his fingers haven't obeyed him after all, gently lifting a curl from a pale, sweat-damp brow and pushing it up with the others. Crowley reasons that speed will be the kindest thing here. He lifts his hand again, curves it round Aziraphale's neck and gives his corporation a few sharp nudges.
Bones shift and knit under his power, with none of the warm subtlety Aziraphale is capable of, or prides himself on. It's a swift and no doubt clumsy process that he's glad Aziraphale is not awake for. The blood staining his skin and clothing breaks apart, the complexity of it reduced into atoms, which disperse and leave Aziraphale unmarked. No one would ever know he'd been injured in the first place. He could almost have fallen asleep halfway through a book.
It's been a very long time since Crowley had seen Aziraphale like this, he doesn't sleep as a habit. The few times he'd witnessed it before, mostly due to overindulgence or excessive miracle use tipping him over into exhaustion. But the few times he'd been present it was always as a guilty witness to the sleepy softness of an angel in repose, the strange intimacy of the quiet breaths that lift his chest.
Aziraphale had never looked this vulnerable before though, and it's a thought he hates more than he can stand.
Crowley shakes his hand, trying to dislodge the faint unpleasant prickle the expenditure of occult power had left in his fingers. That seems likely to be Aziraphale's defences, reacting to demonic interference the way it should. For all that Crowley had made himself an exception over the years, it's somewhat comforting to realise that the angel does still have some self-preservation instincts.
"It's alright, angel, I won't take it personally."
It's a lie, but never where the angel could see.
He sits for a moment, his hand eventually sliding from Aziraphale's skin. He tries not to worry about his refusal to wake again. Crowley has no idea how long he'd been lying there on that cold stone. How much energy he'd needed to keep himself alive. To be honest, he's more worried about the fact that Aziraphale hadn't tried to heal himself, he's more worried about why he'd fallen from a broken staircase without doing a single thing to save himself in the first place. Crowley had been assuming that he was so exhausted because he'd been injured on the floor for some indeterminate stretch of time. But what if he'd been exhausted to start with? What if that was the reason he hadn't tried to help himself, and was also the reason a simple accident had managed to catch him out.
What if he'd been hounded, what if he'd needed to protect himself from something else?
Crowley tucks the coverlet around him carefully.
"What have you been doing here all by yourself?" he asks. "It was just supposed to be a bit of a holiday for you. A bit of sea air." His hand settles on the softness of Aziraphale's waistcoat. "If you wanted me to keep you company, there are easier ways to get my attention."
Crowley decides that Aziraphale is safe enough to have a brief check around the lighthouse, see where he's been staying, and hopefully find out why he's so obsessed with keeping the light on. Was he expecting a ship? They have satellites to deal with that sort of thing now. Even if a ship had lost contact with the shore, there's no bad weather scheduled, anything coming into the coast here shouldn't have any problems. It was possible that Aziraphale's head injury had messed with his corporation's ability to differentiate historical events from the present, a thousand shipwrecks in his head replaying over and over, leaving him in a panic and desperate for Crowley to make sure they came in safe.
He leaves the bedroom, cleaning up the bloodstains and scattered chocolates with a wave. The wine he fishes out from under the table and sets on the wood. The bottom of the lighthouse is small, everything set out as efficiently as possible in the base. The central column is a little rusted, but he can see where half the old mechanism is still inside. Where the crank was replaced with a more modern series of pipes and wires. There's the small kitchenette and the bathroom he'd guessed at earlier, with a side door that seems to lead down into a cistern of sorts. The first third of the metal staircase and the main entrance take up the rest of the room. A look upwards confirms that there's at least one separation between the floors, it's not a constant spiral upwards to the top.
He fixes the damaged metal with a snap, and then heads up the stairs himself.
The break between floors halfway up is a basic wooden stretch of planks, layered around the central tower. There's one sad desk by a small window, with a book about the birds of southern England still open on it, a long-cold cup of tea next to it. Which tells Crowley that this might be the last place Aziraphale had been, though exactly why he'd abandoned his tea and book is still a mystery. The stairs continue upwards, black metal steps screwed to a basic railing, suggesting it was built more for efficiency and strength than any care for aesthetics. Whoever designed this place wanted people to get to the top and very little else.
Crowley follows them up.
There's a small door halfway up the stairs, which looks like it used to lead to a ring around the outside of the lighthouse, though Crowley could see enough of it from the ground outside to know it's nothing more than some rusty holes and the occasional metal spar now. The windows appear every twenty stairs or so, the sunlight slashing in as he climbs and outlining him in the orange of the late afternoon.
It's a fair climb to the top, which tugs strangely at memories of towers and attics and battlements from years past, something that Crowley is not entirely happy about. Nothing good ever seems to happen atop narrow staircases.
The very top floor is smaller than he's expecting. A round room made of glass that holds the spotlight. It's a great heavy slab of a thing that looks like it hasn't been changed for decades. The joins and bolts have been greased and greased over again leaving the metal dark and glossy. The surface is tilted slightly up and the sunlight hits it from several angles. Crowley can already tell it's going to be bright enough to make staying up here an unpleasant experience. He can see how it rotates, the diesel generator in the base must run this as well. All he'll have to do is make sure he switches it on before dark. He'll fulfil his promise to Aziraphale and maybe that will settle him enough to bring him back to some sort of sense. Once he's rested a bit and regained his strength, they can both get out of here. This place may be empty and harmless right now, but Crowley doesn't want to stay anywhere that left Aziraphale sprawled bleeding on the floor. He'll let him sleep for a while and then he'll convince him that they don't need to stay here. If the worst comes to the worst, he'll ask the angel to come back to London with him. He's been playing at lighthouse keeper for half a year, that's long enough.
He closes the book on the way down and takes it with him, and he can't help the idle thought that it's the only thing that feels like it belongs to Aziraphale so far. So much of the rest of the place feels like it's filled with generic items and furniture, books left out for anyone that might come and stay. There's hardly any sense of the angel here at all.
The lack of impression gives a strong sense that Aziraphale had been unhappy here. Because what else could it mean but that he'd never truly made the lighthouse his own? Crowley knows Aziraphale, the way he seeps himself into the nooks of a place, fills the cracks, warms the stone and settles. He makes a place feel like his. He gets attached in ways Crowley never does, but here—here there's almost nothing of him.
Crowley could have called. He should have called. Instead of assuming that Aziraphale would be grateful for the space and the time to be allowed to relax into his own skin; with no one around to look over his shoulder, or make demands on his time. What if he hadn't been grateful for the distance? What if he'd just been lonely? Left to his own devices and with nothing but time to think, not sleeping, barely eating, using his miracles to bolster himself when necessary. Then one moment of inattention had led to an impossible, horrible accident.
And Crowley hadn't been here.