Work Text:
Combat, I'm ready for combat
I say I don't want that, but what if I do?
'Cause cruelty wins in the movies
I've got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you
Crowley stalks down the street, lips still burning from that kiss, flushed high in his cheeks. Stupid corporation. He jams his sunglasses back on. Pedestrians step quickly out of his way as he storms past.
His fists clench by his side, itching for something to hit. His teeth grind together. He might be smoking.
He doesn’t remember ever feeling this way—like a breeze could blow him apart—so he wraps himself in his anger, allows the comforting feeling of hatred to consume him.
There’s nowhere in particular for him to go. The flat is gone, clearly the bookshop is also out. That leaves, what? The coffee shop? Goddamn Hell?
So he just keeps walking and stewing.
Crowley’s fingers close around a piece of paper. He looks down, startled. He hadn’t realized his hand had found it’s way to his pocket. He unfolds the crumpled scrap.
Angel, I need to talk to you. The truth is, I love you. I have loved you since before the beginning, since before I even saw you. I love you most ardently, as your beloved Mr. Darcy would say. I did research for you, Angel. Gotta say, I like her whiskey better than her novels. But Jane had one thing right—
The demon lets out a frustrated roar, throwing it to the ground.
“Mr. Crowley? Are you alright?” Muriel’s timid voice comes from behind him.
The demon rounds on the young angel with a snarl.
“Only—I went to the bookshop and Mr. Aziraphale was leaving, but he looked like he was…crying? You know that thing humans do when they make water come from their eyes?”
Crowley levels his darkest glare at Muriel. He does not want to hear about poor Aziraphale’s sadness. If it was so hard for him to leave Crowley behind, he should have stayed on Earth.
“But he wouldn’t talk to me. I think something might be wrong, Mr. Crowley. I thought maybe you could talk to him, since you’re friends.” Muriel twists their hands nervously in their skirt. “Or…was that…wrong…”
“Do you really need me to spell this out for you? Yes, that was wrong. Archangel Aziraphale doesn’t care about me. I don’t care about him. Now, leave.”
Muriel takes a deep breath and raises their chin. “No.”
“What?” Crowley scowls. Muriel never stood up to people. The scrivener had no backbone.
“Mr. Crowley, something is wrong. I don’t know what happened after I left the bookshop, but I want to help. It’s my job to help.”
“Not your job to help a demon.”
“It is my job to help the Archangels.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“And I want to help you.”
“Ang—scrivener. Come here. Yeah, closer.” Crowley beckons, wearing a hungry grin, and Muriel shuffles closer. “Do you know what I am? What I will do to you? I am a demon of hellfire; I can erase you from existence, and if you don’t leave me alone, I will tear your corporation apart atom by atom until you run screaming back to Heaven. Do. I. Make. Myself. Clear.”
Muriel sniffs, eyes shining with fierce determination through their tears. “I’m going to figure this out, Mr. Crowley. It’s going to be okay.” They turn back towards the bookshop, but stop, looking over their shoulder. “I know you won’t hurt me,” they say quietly.
Easy they come, easy they go
I jump from the train, I ride off alone
I never grew up, it's getting so old
Help me hold onto you
The Bentley rattles as the speedometer pushes past 100. Crowley squeezes the steering wheel until his fingernails cut into his palms around the leather. The radio clicks on. “ Love of my life, you’ve hurt me— “ Crowley slams the radio off, silencing Freddie’s crooning voice.
“Not you too,” he says to the car. The Bentley doesn’t respond. Roads rush past them, cement and graffiti blurring into hedgerows and cow pastures. The arrow in the speedometer twitches back and forth as it maxes out.
Crowley barely looks where he’s going as he screeches around turns and barrels across straightaways. “I’ll turn the radio back on if you play nice,” he says.
The volume knob turns on its own, Freddy’s voice shouting this time: “ ...and another one gone, and another one gone, another one bites the dust! ”
The demon punches the radio off again. “Fuck you, too, then.”
He presses the gas pedal even harder into the floor, the silence of the car burning his ears. The quiet rumbling of the engine is the only noise.
“I forgive you,” says Aziraphale’s voice.
Crowley slams on the breaks, half expecting to see the angel in the passenger’s seat, but no one is there.
A cow moos at him from behind its wire fence, and Crowley makes a face at it.
He drops his head onto the steering wheel, all the anger draining out of him, replaced by soppy wet sadness. “What did I do? If he didn’t love me, he could just say so.”
Drums and John Lennon. “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah—”
“No, but he doesn’t. He didn’t choose me.” Crowley is not going to cry. Demons don’t cry.
He picks himself up, and starts driving again. “Though I’m crying, I can’t help but hear you say it’s late, it’s late, it’s late, but not too late.”
“If you don’t play something more appropriately melancholy, I will remove your radio with a spoon.”
The Bentley’s wheels seem to let out a sigh as the channel goes static, then crackles on with: “Too much love will kill you…”
Crowley gives himself over to the music and the road, letting the Bentley choose their path. Eventually, the car screeches to a halt. Crowley blinks, puts his sunglasses on.
“Wait—” He sees a familiar red storefront through the window. “You took me back? I trusted you! I stop paying attention for one minute—”
The Bentley rocks back and forth gently. The door clicks open. “Fine, fine, I’m getting out. You happy now?” He slams the door behind him and saunters up to the bookshop with a sneer.
Dark side, I search for your dark side
But what if I'm alright, right, right, right here?
And I cut off my nose just to spite my face
Then I hate my reflection for years and years
The first things Crowley disappears are the bibles. Aziraphale has—had--an antique collection of misprints and first editions that he is—was--quite proud of. Crowley almost tripped over them when he entered the room. Just a snap in anger and they were gone, leaving a deliciously empty space behind.
Then Crowley grinned. The desk went next, with all of Aziraphale’s papers and photographs. He savored it, trailing fingertips over the polished wood before it vanished with a wave of the hand. Next, the rest of the books, leaving empty bookshelves. Then the shelves themselves, the angel’s glasses, his mug.
Eventually, all that was left was a couch, lonely in the center of the room.
Crowley drapes himself on it, content.
He shifts a little, trying to get comfortable. This is no less than Aziraphale deserves. Archangel. Pah. Crowley doesn’t need him. He doesn’t need his stupid books or his stupid bookshop or his stupid sanctimonious face.
He does need wine, though.
Aziraphale’s wine collection makes a sudden appearance where the bookshelves used to be. It’s copious, filling almost as much space as the books did. Crowley picks up the oldest bottle he can find and pops the cork. He’ll make this collection disappear the old-fashioned way. Châteauneuf-du-Pape 1921. For special occasions. He toasts the air. “Bottoms up.”
By the time several bottles are rolling around empty on the floor, he is well and truly sloshed. He can feel himself entering the sad drunk stage, so he grabs the nearest bottle and keeps going. Just gotta power through.
Somehow, he has ended up on the floor, too, so he has to reach up to find the bottle. He tilts it away from him to look at the label, but the words blur before his eyes. The room is too dark. When did it get dark? Oh, right, night. Crowley rips off his sunglasses. No one here to see him, anyway. No reason to keep them on. No angel he could scare away with his snake eyes. The arm of the glasses snaps as he takes them off, and he throws them to the ground. They skitter across the floor until they hit the baseboard across the room. Crowley hauls himself to his feet to pick them up again, but his stomach lurches with the sudden movement and he hurries to the bathroom.
He hasn’t been drunk enough to let his corporation get the better of him in a long time, he thinks, as he empties his guts into the toilet. Come to think of it, he didn’t realize the bookshop had a bathroom at all, unless he imagined it into being just now. He rests his cheek against the cool, damp ceramic of the toilet.
Getting up again, movement catches his eye. He sees himself in the mirror above the sink, face pallid and waxy. His eyes are sunken and unnaturally yellow, the snake slits a reminder of every day he spent in Hell. Something just looks wrong, too. His face is too skinny or his mouth too thin. He bares his teeth at himself, unable to look away. No wonder Aziraphale left. No one would want to hang around with a pathetic serpent like him.
“No!” he snarls at his reflection. “You are pathetic. You’re a fucking demon. You don’t need an angel to like you. You wield the powers of fucking darkness.”
He splashes water in his face and leaves the bathroom.
I wake in the night, I pace like a ghost
The room is on fire, invisible smoke
And all of my heroes die all alone
Help me hold onto you
Crowley dreams of burning books. Pages blackening, smoke and ash floating through the air. He’s suffocating in the bookshop. He knows something is missing; he knows he’s looking for something, but he can’t find it. He tears apart the shop, tossing flaming books and furniture over his shoulders without flinching, digging through the stacks of rubble, but there is nothing. Nothing but emptiness. An eternity of emptiness, of a nagging hole in his soul that will never be filled.
The fire spreads to his wings, and this time it does burn him. He bats at his flaming feathers, trying to put them out, but nothing works. His feathers are turning black, black, black, and there’s a ssssssmell of ssssulfur, and pain, and scales growing across his skin, and pain, and great thudding footsteps coming towards him—
Crowley jerks awake, still smelling smoke. The suffocating feeling hasn’t gone from his chest, but his heaving, shaking breaths don’t help at all. His head pounds—should have sobered up before going to sleep last night—there’s something wet on his cheeks—a phantom pain where his wings would be.
Crowley turns and vomits over the edge of the couch.
“Blech,” he says, articulately, wiping his mouth. He stands, body shaky with adrenaline—or whatever the demonic equivalent; they didn’t exactly cover that in training—and the need to do something. His shoes click against the floor as he paces, a steady, ominous beat— great thudding footsteps coming towards him— his eye catches on something white lying on the floor where Aziraphale’s desk used to be.
An envelope.
He picks it up with unsteady hands.
It says Crowley on the back in golden, looping ink.
He slides a finger under the flap and tears it open.
My dearest Crowley,
I shan’t try to change your mind. I know you too well for that. This is only to say, I know we parted on bad terms. You should know that I also love care for you. I hope that I shall see you again. You should come visit me sometime. Or I could visit you. Now that I’m an Archangel, they will overlook my peculiarities, and given that you are more of a freelancer now, it should work out just splendidly.
Yours,
Aziraphale
Crowley’s hands shake so hard as he reads that the paper trembles and the letters blur. It’s still dark outside the bookshop, but he miracles a new pair of sunglasses onto his face. The door rattles in its frame as it slams behind him.
(I see right through me, I see right through me)
'Cause they see right through me
They see right through me
They see right through
Can you see right through me?
The elevator to Heaven is uncannily bright, making Crowley glad for his sunglasses. He punches the up button and waits until it spits him out in Heaven. He doesn’t bother with a disguise or an excuse this time, just strides through the vast blank rooms, picturing Aziraphale and imagining he knows where he’s going.
A familiar head of white-blond hair shining under the lights. The familiar melody of the angel’s voice, speaking to a scrivener, though Crowley can’t make out the words. The back of his beige jacket. His stiff upright posture.
“Angel,” Crowley says, low and deadly. He’s far enough away that Aziraphale shouldn’t be able to hear him, but he glances over his shoulder, eyes widening when he sees the demon. The lesser angel scurries away at a few words from Aziraphale.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, walking towards him. His face entertains a nervous, hopeful smile.
“What is this?” Crowley asks, holding up the letter.
Aziraphale’s face falls at his tone. “A—well, an apology, of sorts. An invitation.”
Crowley sneers. “You never once apologized.”
“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale says, reflexively, taking a step back from the force of Crowley’s emotions.
“Are you? You’re still here.” Crowley gestures at the blank heavenly landscape.
“Well—” Aziraphale’s voice jumps an octave in pitch, “I’m not sorry for coming here, for trying to help people, but—but I am sorry that I had to leave you behind. I never wanted this, Crowley.”
“That’s not good enough.” Crowley holds the letter up and incinerates it in the palm of his hand.
“Crowley, we can still be us! A group of the two of us, like you said.”
“I don’t need you!” Crowley bites out, face contorting around the words. “I am fine without you. You don’t get to have me just sometimes. You don’t get to come back after you left me!” He's breathing hard, just like after his nightmare, a little lightheaded. Aziraphale looks worried, and sad, and like he'd rather like to ask Crowley to sit down and have a cup of tea but knows exactly how well that suggestion would go across.
“What’s this?” asks a high, stern voice.
All the king's horses, all the king's men
Couldn't put me together again
'Cause all of my enemies started out friends
Help me hold onto you
“Michael,” Aziraphale says, face flickering into a false smile. “Did you need something?”
“Michael,” Crowley drawls. “Long time no see.”
“Not as long as I would like.” Michael turns to Aziraphale. “I ran into a scrivener who said something about a demon invading Heaven. Care to explain?”
“We were just…”
“You know the rules, Aziraphale. You can’t just invite the enemy in, it would be chaos.”
“The…enemy…” Aziraphale parrots. “Right. Er, I didn’t invite him…really… We were just talking, that is.”
Michael crosses to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Aziraphale, looking down her nose at Crowley. “Mm. Well, I believe just talking is how it started for quite a few demons about six thousand years ago.”
“Oh, shut up!” Crowley says. “You don’t get to talk about my fall. You don’t know what it was like.”
“You’re right. I chose to stay with my siblings in Heaven, on the path of Righteousness. Just like Aziraphale did. Now,” she clasps her hands in front of herself, “I think we can all agree it would be better if you stayed downstairs, where you belong. Isn’t that right, Archangel Aziraphale?”
Aziraphale opens and closes his mouth, staring at Crowley. He worries at the edge of his vest, and casts his gaze around the room helplessly. “I—well, that is…I…” He doesn’t meet Crowley’s eyes again.
I've been the archer
I've been the prey
Who could ever leave me, darling?
But who could stay?
(I see right through me, I see right through me)
“Perhaps that would be best,” he whispers.
You could stay