Chapter Text
Crowley leaves London for a while.
Awful cesspit of a place, he tells himself. Full of the most irritating humans. So dreary and grey, too. A dreary, grey place filled with dreary, grey people. Quite similar to Hell, really, in that respect. And don't even get Crowley started on the M25 - if he could get his hands on whoever was responsible for that monstrosity, well.
London is finished, he tells himself. He never particularly cared for it anyway.
-
He finds himself drawn to wayside pubs. Forgotten, unpopular establishments with peeling floral wallpaper and greying pastoral paintings on the walls.
In one such place, Crowley leans heavily against the wall. The table he'd chosen, shunted into a corner, is hemmed in by the pool table and an ancient fruit machine, both deserted.
"Never asked anything of anyone, y'know," He says. Aside from the rustle of the newspaper of the bar's only other occupant, he garners no response. "Well. I did ask. But they weren't selfish questions. Just - just genuinely wanted to know, didn't I? Then you're," He hiccups. "Then you're surrounded by hellfire and - and - listen, if God wanted everyone to just blindly follow, why bother with the free will business at all? Y-y'get unending serv- serv- loyalty from someone with no free will, don't you? So if that's what They're after, then..."
"D'you think maybe it's best for you to go home, sweetheart?" Someone says. Not the newspaper rustler, someone else. Crowley's finding it rather difficult to get his eyes to focus.
"Got no home," He says. "Not anymore." He drinks the last of the bottle of whisky, slamming it down on the table. "'Nother one, please, quick as you like."
-
When Crowley eventually returns, the bookshop looks the same as it always did.
He stands over the road for a long time, his teeth gritted tight.
Bodies are ridiculous. They ache and they itch and they hurt. Sometimes, just for a bit of variety, they can conjure up bouts of dreadful nausea from absolutely nothing at all.
Crowley experiences the latter as he stands there, lost in a steady stream of passers-by. He counts his breaths, which does nothing to calm the panicked thudding of his heart, then crosses the street.
There are any number of cool, collected, disinterested remarks he could make when he steps inside - when he breathes the sweet smell of old books, long since tied to Aziraphale, to safety, to home - but what he ends up saying is -
"That's an interesting cardigan."
Muriel turns and beams at him.
"Do you really think so?" They say. "I'm trying to blend in, you know. I think humans wear this sort of thing quite a lot."
The cardigan is pink and orange and covered in large pompoms the size of tennis balls. Crowley is inclined to believe that the sort of humans who favour such a garment inhabit some far off colony which has long since lost contact with the wider world.
"Nailed it," He says. "Proper human stuff, that is. Looks great."
"Oh, thank you," Muriel says. "Er. What are you doing here?"
Crowley shrugs, patting a nearby stack of books with the air of a mechanic slapping the roof of a vehicle.
"Just thought I'd check in on the old place, you know. See how things are going."
"Oh, really well," Muriel says.
Crowley takes a few tentative steps here and there, lost in the familiarity of it all, of a thousand things he'd tried his hardest not to think of. The sofa, where Aziraphale had sat one evening with his feet tucked under him, hands cupped around a wineglass with a sort of tenderness that Crowley somehow felt deep in his chest. The stairs, from which either of them could be found pontificating on an inebriated evening, bickering for fun about historical events.
This room, where Crowley had yelled in flames, lost and alone. Where he’d told Aziraphale everything, more or less, and it hadn’t mattered a bit.
It's impossible, he thinks. He'd wanted the shop to be changed beyond recognition. He'd wanted Muriel to have gutted the place and turned it into a milk bar - not because he knew that such a thing would hurt Aziraphale, but because then at least there'd be a wound. There'd be a physical sign that he was gone, that he'd left Crowley, that everything they ever saw and did together meant nothing at all.
Instead, the bookshop is still here, and still piled high with books. Muriel is talking, their voice a low hum. All Crowley can focus on beyond the roaring in his ears is that if he really properly ignores them Aziraphale could've just stepped into the back room for a moment to fetch a book or to put the kettle on.
His unbearable traitor of a body hurts, at that. What a curious thing it is, to be whole and unharmed but to ache just the same.
Swallowing hard, just to have something to do with his hands more than anything, Crowley opens the till. There's a strange assortment of items in there - marbles and a pound coin shaped locker token, a yellow bouncy ball and a button shaped like a flower.
"Oh, yes," Muriel says, cheerfully, when Crowley picks out the button and holds it up. "I think I'm really getting the hang of running a shop."
"So these are...?"
"Payment. For books."
"You've been selling books? For this stuff?"
"Is that wrong?" Muriel says, their face falling. "Only, it's a bookshop, and the Metatron said I was to look after it, and I think you're meant to sell things. In a shop."
"Ok, ok," Crowley says, putting the button back and closing the till drawer altogether. "First off, you need to take money off people for books. Humans got rid of bartering ages back."
"Oh," Muriel says, with the air of someone making a mental note. "Alright. It's just - the money seemed a bit sad. A bit boring? I like these things better."
"Well, yeah. Understandable. But also - Aziraphale doesn't actually sell books."
"But - but it's a shop-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Crowley says. "I never got it either. He just tends to cough or linger too close until customers go away."
"But I like customers," Muriel says, eyes bright. "Humans are so strange and interesting, don't you think?"
Crowley makes a vague noise of assent.
"You heard from the boss, then?” He asks, as if this isn't the purpose of his visit. “Mr. Supreme Archangel? Or is he too busy supreme archangel-ing?"
"You mean Mr. F- Aziraphale?"
"Yes," Crowley says, exhaling through his nose. "I mean Aziraphale.”
"Oh," Muriel says. "No, actually. I haven’t heard anything. But I’m sure he’s just really busy! I know there are some policy changes coming up – lots of paperwork, I expect. You know how it is.”
“No," Crowley says, swallowing hard. He pauses, caught in indecision, then moves towards the door. "Listen, I - keep up the good work, alright?"
"You don't have to go," Muriel says. "I can make tea? I’m really getting the hang of it now, I started drinking it and everything."
"Some other time," Crowley says, right before he slips out of the door.
-
“You’re back,” Nina says when he approaches the counter in the coffee shop, a week later.
“Apparently so,” Crowley says.
Nina looks at him, something sharp and assessing in her gaze that makes him feel twitchy.
“Six espressos, is it?”
“Ah, no. I was wondering if – if – you know Muriel-?”
“Muriel?” Nina says, frowning. Crowley jerks his head back in the direction of the bookshop. “Oh. Iced soy latte, popcorn syrup.”
“Yeah, one of those. Sorry, did you say popcorn syrup?”
“It’s meant for milkshakes,” Nina says, already busy looking through the fridge. “But they seemed really happy about it. Didn’t have the heart to stop them. Customer’s always right, and all that.” She pauses, setting the milk down, knocking the door shut with her hip. “Load of rubbish, that. Customers are generally wrong about most things. Look at you, with your espressos.”
“Mm,” Crowley says, vaguely.
“So are they running the shop indefinitely, then?” Nina asks.
“Yep.”
“And Mr. Fell is-?”
“Otherwise engaged.”
“Ok,” Nina says. “And is that something you’d like to talk about?”
“Not particularly, no,” Crowley says, smiling a smile that’s all teeth.
-
He gets a phone call from a number he doesn’t recognise.
Par for the course, really, owning a mobile phone. He’d had a hand in inventing cold callers, after all.
There’s something odd about this particular call, though. Something distinctly celestial about the feel of it.
Aziraphale never got the hang of texting.
“Seems like your sort of thing, yes,” He’d said, in that exasperatedly fond way of his, when Crowley had first explained the whole thing in the 90s.
“Sometimes people just don’t wanna phone.”
“I see,” Aziraphale had said. “And will you only be reachable via this…text messaging from now on?”
“Nah,” Crowley had said. “Ring me all you like, angel.”
Crowley’s phone buzzes away on the passenger seat of the Bentley. He navigates the traffic on autopilot, lost in thought, the car slithering through impossible gaps between buses, narrowly missing pedestrians and workmen.
Part of him desperately wants to pick up. He wants to answer, and be sure to mention how busy he is and how little he’s thought about everything that happened.
He wants to hear Aziraphale’s voice, the softness that can so easily be sharp. He wants to hear him say Crowley.
He squeezes the steering wheel for a moment, his grip white-knuckled. Then he gestures at the phone, silencing it.
“And no more calls like that, d’you hear me?” He says, in a voice that brooks no argument, willing the words into the very atoms of the device. “Not a single one.”
-
“Aziraphale was here,” He says, the next time he visits the bookshop. Even without the phone call he thinks he’d know – there's something different about the very air in the place, the moment he steps through the door.
“Hello, Crowley,” Muriel says, cheerfully. They slip a bookmark into whatever it is they’re reading and close it. “Er, yes. He just wanted to see how things were going. He said I’m doing a good job.”
“Right,” Crowley says. The energy that had brought him here, propelled him down the London streets, leaves him just as soon as it had come. “Right. Good. That’s good.”
“I made tea,” They say. “And I told him about that bartering business and how I’d stopped it because you’d said so, and he said it was an honest mistake to make, and –“
“Because I said so?” Crowley interrupts. “You told him I’d been here?”
“Well,” Muriel hesitates. “He seemed to know anyway.” Crowley starts pacing, then. His mind is racing and his mouth is bone dry – this body really is ridiculous. “It’s ok, though. He just wanted to know how you are. It was nice.”
Crowley's thankful that he’s taken to leaving his glasses on.
“And what did you tell him?”
“That you’re ok. That you’ve been helping me. Was that wrong?”
They look so worried that it knocks the fight right out of him.
“No. No. ‘S’fine. Listen, I’m just gonna,” Crowley gestures vaguely in the direction of the street. “Got stuff to do. Big stuff. Lots of stuff. I’m awash with stuff. Be sure to tell him that, if he comes back.”
“I will,” Muriel says.
He has his hand on the door handle when they say, “He seemed sad.”
Ridiculous things, bodies. Crowley’s feels as weak as a baby bird. There’s a lump in his throat so thick that it hurts.
“Did he?” He says, without turning around.
“Yeah,” Muriel says. “The – the same way you do. I didn’t tell him that,” They add, interrupting what would’ve been a reflexive denial. Crowley isn’t sad, Crowley’s never sad. “I just thought you might want to know.”
“Yeah,” Crowley says, his voice barely a croak. “Thanks, Muriel.”
-
He sleeps for a month after that.
Sleep has always been Crowley’s safe haven, his sanctuary. Probably one of the Almighty’s best works, if he’s honest. There’s something so brilliant about being able to check out for a little while. And there are blankets. Humans don’t know how good they’ve got it.
Somehow, it isn’t the same. Somehow, even though he’s back in a proper bed, back in the flat, now his again, it doesn’t fit. He doesn’t fit.
He dreams, for a start. He dreams of moving through the streets as a snake, unnoticed by the humans, while a terrible storm rages overhead. He dreams of Heaven, of the strange smell of it, like sharp lemon and also nothing at all. He dreams of the vast white endlessness, an inescapable void.
He dreams, of course, of Aziraphale.
It was inevitable, he supposes. With six thousand years of material to draw from it was bound to happen, sooner or later.
Crowley wishes it could’ve happened sooner. It would’ve been the easiest thing in the world, before, to dream of Aziraphale. He could’ve woken up and reached for his phone, eyes still closed. He could’ve rung and, after hearing that fussy, lovely little hello, simply said, “Angel. Fancy a drink?”
As it is, he wakes up confused, tangled in blankets, Aziraphale’s name on the tip of his tongue.
It’s a new sort of loss, the way the memories come to him all at once. Aziraphale, gone. Crowley drinks alone and doesn’t eat dessert in fancy restaurants alone. If he were to ring the bookshop he'd get Muriel and their stilted telephone manner, not Aziraphale, ready with some embarrassing phrase he’d heard on the radio and assumed was hip and fresh, the sort of thing grandmothers had deemed passé back in Edwardian times.
It's unbearable. He slips out of bed, pacing up and down like a caged animal. The dream had been painfully ordinary. He and Aziraphale had gone to dinner, and Crowley hadn’t eaten. How many evenings had there been, exactly like that?
Except those evenings are long dead. Not even a miracle could bring them back. Crowley chose Aziraphale, and Aziraphale chose Heaven.
He ends up leaving the flat without even putting on a jacket. There’s a chill in the air that he barely feels as he clambers into the Bentley.
“Oh, hello,” Maggie says, when he walks into the coffee shop a little while later. “Nina said you were back.”
Crowley blinks. The shop is in the middle of its mid afternoon lull, the sky outside darkening like ink dropped into water. The coffee shop is lit up, golden and comforting, an oasis in the dusk. He feels like he might still be dreaming. Wasn’t Aziraphale just here? He could’ve sworn he could feel him, back at the flat – and here, too, haunted by ghosts of time they’d spent together.
“It’s ok,” Maggie says, for some reason, frowning worriedly at him. “You sit down, I’ll bring a coffee over.”
-
“I’m fine,” Crowley says, once he’s halfway through his drink. It absolutely isn’t what he would’ve chosen – it’s very sweet, topped with sprinkles like a sundae.
“I know,” Maggie says.
“Thanks.”
Maggie just smiles and sips her tea. Crowley looks out of the window, over at the bookshop, at the lights in the windows. It should be Aziraphale over there, he thinks. Aziraphale listening to one of his dreary records, humming under his breath. Aziraphale peering over his spectacles at a particular page of a book, his brow furrowed. Aziraphale pouring them both wine, his gaze warm and heavy in the candlelight.
“I like Muriel,” Maggie says. “I. I mean, they’re not Mr. Fell, and it’s a shame that he’s not here, but they’re lovely.”
“They are,” Crowley says, and finds that he means it.
Maggie smiles at that. She’s clearly working up to something. Crowley waits, and takes a sip of his drink.
“Nina said you’d rather not talk about it-“
“Nina was right.”
“Only sometimes it can help,” Maggie says. “Especially when it’s about – about love.”
Crowley doesn’t move a muscle. He sits with his coffee in hand, one leg thrown carelessly over the other, and doesn’t even blink.
Love is such a tiny way of looking at it, he thinks, somewhat viciously. It’s such a human notion, the way Maggie intends it – love as someone to sit with in the evenings, as a hand to hold.
He and Aziraphale are celestial beings, cast from light and hellfire. Crowley had a hand in hanging the stars – after that, love feels a little like a parlour game. Something to amuse the children.
And yet, he thinks, perhaps the humans are right after all. Despite it all – despite their thousands of years, despite Heaven and Hell – Crowley would quite like to sit with Aziraphale in the evenings. He’d quite like to hold his hand.
There were days when he thought Aziraphale might want that too. There were days when he’d avoid Aziraphale’s eye for fear of being truly seen. There were days when he thought that no matter what nonsense brewed above or below, at least they could rely on each other.
The very picture of indifference, Crowley finishes the rest of his drink.
“Not bad at all,” He says, setting the cup down on the low table between them. “How much do I owe you?”
“Oh, nothing,” Maggie says.
“On the house,” Nina says, pausing by the table, tea towel in hand.
“Thanks,” Crowley says, getting to his feet.
He doesn’t go far. Back in the safety of the Bentley, he watches the bookshop.
“It’s fine,” He says to his phone, clutched tightly in his hand. “Let him call.”