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Crowley’s not sure what makes him say it the first time, in the flickering firelight of a ruined city.
He’s not looking for Aziraphale when he makes the trip to the razed Jerusalem to see what exactly he’s being commended for, but he finds him just outside of town, watching what’s left become ashes. Thick black smoke rises like a specter from the bones of the city, painting over the stars above, and even from this distance, heat prickles across Crowley’s skin. Aziraphale must be as close to the flames as he can stand.
On the rare opportunity Crowley had occasion to observe it, Aziraphale’s take on divine fury had always been a cold thing, sharp and biting like a winter’s storm and so contrary to the sword of flame he’d once wielded. Crowley half expects to see it in Aziraphale’s face now, icy and hard at the loss of the city he’d so cherished.
Mostly, Aziraphale just looks tired. His eyes are shuttered with some emotion Crowley can’t identify. There’s soot smeared across his cheek, ash in his hair, and his robes are badly singed in places. He’d probably been in the city when they’d razed it, Crowley realizes, helping people escape or else protecting his collection of old cuneiform tablets from destruction or looting. He could have been out of the city with a blink, but he’d stayed long enough for the flames to touch him, for the scent of smoke to cling to him.
Whatever it is, it’s not fear of reprisal that makes Crowley clear his throat and say, a little awkwardly, “This wasn’t me, you know.” He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “My side, I mean. I’ve been causing a fair amount of trouble in Babylon, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t - they came up with this on their own.”
Aziraphale lets out a long, slow breath. “I know,” he says without taking his eyes off of the burning city. “I know.”
Crowley frowns at that, unused to being taken at his word. Aziraphale usually assumes all the world’s ills are down to some infernal interference, that Crowley and his ilk have their fingers in every sin across the world. And this, the destruction of a holy city, the chaos and death, this is exactly what demons are supposed to inspire. It’s what Hell expects of him, at any rate, and why should Heaven expect any different?
“I mean, I could have done,” Crowley says, nettled for some reason he can’t quite articulate.
Aziraphale wrenches his gaze away from the wreckage of the city, the ghost of a smile heavy on his lips. He sighs. “No you couldn’t have, Crowley.” Before Crowley can reply, Aziraphale’s wings bloom from his back, holy light gleaming through the streaks of soot that stain the white feathers, and he takes off into the night.
Crowley doesn’t move for a long time, staring into the flames until they burn themselves down to embers. Something great and formless lingers in the space where the angel had stood, like smoke in still air. Crowley breathes it in, holds it in his chest until his lungs burn with it. Somewhere in the dark of his being, a spark ignites, guttering in the night like a candle flame.
In the distance, the first weak tendrils of dawn spill over the horizon.
-
It’s down to several miracles, both literal and figurative, that Crowley makes it out of Cannae with his corporation intact, and by the time he staggers into Rome and learns the full extent of what he’d escaped, he almost wishes he hadn’t. The panic that seizes the city sounds an awful lot like the precursor to another of Hell’s commendations, and Crowley’s not sure he wants the credit.
Rome lies sprawled out before him, full of new and exciting temptations, but something in Crowley longs for familiar. Some small reminder that not everything crumbles to dust and ash. His villa hadn’t been a home, not really, but he’d gotten used to the way sunlight fell across the courtyard in the late afternoon, the sleek touch of marble, the elaborate gardens. It was a constant across the decades, even as the mayfly humans around him aged and died and were born anew.
Aziraphale is easy enough to find, holed up in a temple of Minerva and passing himself off as a scribe. Crowley raps on the open doorway of Aziraphale’s spartan quarters, and the angel looks up from the scroll laid out in front of him. “Crowley!” he says, fondness hiding beneath the surprise. “I thought you were still down south - what brings you to Rome, dear boy?”
Crowley shrugs with what he hopes is a convincing amount of nonchalance. “Felt like a change of scenery. Thought I’d try my hand in politics.”
“Yes, well,” Aziraphale says, nose wrinkling up in distaste. “You know I’ll have to thwart anything you attempt.”
“Naturally,” Crowley agrees. “Care to thwart some lunchtime wiles with me?”
Aziraphale frowns, glancing down at the scroll again. He’ll decline, Crowley knows, for propriety’s sake, because Crowley is a demon, because Crowley is the enemy. Crowley will tempt, Aziraphale will demur, and Crowley will request. Eventually, after Aziraphale has tied himself in knots to justify it to himself, he’ll accept under the guise of keeping an eye on evil. Crowley knows all the steps; they’ve danced it together enough times in the last 4000 years, and Crowley’s learned not to take it personally.
He’s just not sure he wants go through it all right now. There is something broken in him, like a cistern with a crack that he can’t find, draining slowly but steadily. He hasn’t slept since Cannae, and he doesn’t need it, not like humans do, but he’d gotten into the habit. The lack of it itches beneath his skin, fills up all the empty spaces inside of him with a relentless, droning buzz of insect wings.
He’d tried a couple of times. The weather is warm this time of year, and Crowley is a serpent at heart, content to spend the hours basking in the midday sun as he drifts in and out of consciousness. Unfortunately, his human corporation doesn’t seem to care that Crowley isn’t really human: every time he closes his eyes, the scarlet flash of war and death bobs to the surface of his mind and refuses to sink again.
“Please,” Crowley says, skipping to the end. “Have lunch with me.”
Aziraphale peers at him for a long moment, brows furrowed like he’s searching for the answer to some great divine mystery in Crowley’s face. Crowley gives him a tired grin, a bit more honest than he’d intended, and the lines in Aziraphale’s face deepen. Finally, his expression clears, and then he nods, rolling up the scroll and tucking it away. “Alright,” he says.
Crowley blinks in surprise. He hadn’t expected it to work, not really. Aziraphale clings to his little rituals, hides behind them like they’ll keep him from Falling. And maybe they will. Crowley’s not sure what keeps angels in Heaven these days, if it’s blind faith in the party line or just the appearance of it. Either way, Aziraphale’s easy acceptance is probably a portent of some kind, and not a good one.
They get lunch at a little place around the corner where the staff and most of the patrons know Aziraphale. He waves cheerily at a few of them, but the nervous gossip that flits around the restaurant hardly pauses. Crowley tunes it out; he doesn’t need a fourth-hand retelling of what he’d seen with his own eyes. The food is good and the wine decent, so Crowley drinks enough that everything goes a bit fuzzy, and that makes it easier.
He rests his chin in his hand and half-listens as Aziraphale chatters about everything and nothing, local news and his fellow acolytes, what he’s reading and scribing. Aziraphale’s voice is exactly as fussy and precise as his demeanor would suggest, but Crowley finds himself drowsing. Something in him settles, like finally shedding the last bit of old skin after a molt.
“Crowley?”
There’s a light touch to the back of his hand, and Crowley startles awake. “Sorry,” he mumbles, frowning. “Must have fallen asleep.” He could wake himself up with a thought, banish the alcohol from his blood, but he’s loathe to disturb the stillness that’s settled within him.
He glances up to see Aziraphale looking at him with a rare undisguised concern. Crowley bristles uncomfortably; he forgets sometimes that just because Aziraphale acts like he’s perpetually stuck several centuries in the past doesn’t mean he’s not perfectly aware of current events. “I do hope you weren’t involved in that fighting in Cannae,” Aziraphale says carefully. “They say it was quite a mess.”
Something like locusts buzzes angry within Crowley, obliterating the stillness until he can’t hear anything else. “It wasn’t a mess, angel,” he snaps, hissing the sibilants. “It was a massacre.” The Romans hadn’t stood a chance, not surrounded on all sides without warning.
Aziraphale reaches out to touch Crowley again, his hand hovering in the space above Crowley’s, but then he seems to think better of it. He folds both hands in his lap. “Well,” he says, affecting a haughty tone that’s not quite genuine, “I’m glad to see you made it out in one piece.”
Crowley’s not so sure he did. He’s seen plenty of humans die before in various violent and bloody ways. He’d been there at the very first murder, and War has long run rampant along the continent, hair blazing as bright as her army’s torches. But there is a hollow place in Crowley still, cold like a winter midnight in some barren, desolate place.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Crowley says, knocking back the rest of his miraculously full cup of wine. He can feel his mood tipping toward maudlin, and he’d much rather drink straight through to the other side. “Tell me more about these priestesses of yours. They sound corruptible.”
“Oh, you leave them alone,” Aziraphale says, sounding much more like his usually prissy self now. “They’ve been through enough already, poor dears, all terrified of being the next virgin sacrifice for Delphi.”
“Sounds rough,” Crowley says dryly. “Though it seems like there’s at least one surefire way to get out of being a virgin sacrifice.” He gives Aziraphale a leering grin, back on steadier ground now.
Aziraphale tuts at him. “I’m just saying, the girls are scared enough without setting a demon on them. Besides, I daresay your side has had quite the windfall just lately.”
“That had nothing to do with me,” Crowley says. It isn’t meant to be defensive, just a statement of fact, but Aziraphale’s mouth twitches wryly. “Gluttony and sloth are much more fun.”
Aziraphale pops the last bite of dormouse into his mouth and chews thoughtfully for a moment. He swallows and then says, “How did you come to be involved then? I thought you were further south.” His voice is carefully casual, but Crowley can hear the steel underneath.
Crowley shrugs. “I was. Then I wasn’t. Didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Oh,” says Aziraphale. “Have you heard from--?” His eyes flick pointedly toward the floor.
“I kind of got… conscripted,” Crowley says, preventing his cheeks from flushing with an effort of demonic will. Aziraphale gives him an arch look. The whims of humans typically have very little effect on Crowley’s behavior, and it’s the work of a blink to convince any conscription officers that there’s a very good reason indeed why a fit young man such as Crowley should be left to his own devices.
And it wasn’t that Crowley had had to go along with the fighting. He just... hadn’t been able to think of a good enough reason not to. He doesn’t care much which group of humans control which bit of land, but he’d gotten used to the way the Romans ran things and hadn’t particularly wanted that to change. Who even knew if the Carthaginians could throw a decent Bacchanal?
“Anyway,” Crowley says, pushing up from the table, “I’m here now. C’mon, you can show me where all the Senators live.”
Aziraphale purses his lips, bright eyes a bit too keen, but he gets up to join Crowley. “I’m hardly going to make it easier for you to meddle, dear boy,” he says as they stroll out of the restaurant. “No, I’m afraid you’ll have to find that out for yourself. Provided you can outsmart me, of course.”
A soft smile touches Crowley’s lips, and the flickering thing inside of him glows just a bit brighter, illuminating the darkness.
--
He’s nowhere near Alexandria when the fire starts, and the last he’d heard, Aziraphale was somewhere in China, or maybe the Middle East.
Idle curiosity propels Crowley to take a look when the news finally does make its way to Pompeii, where he’d been encouraging the Bacchan Mysteries to various vices, mostly through example. There are several contradictory rumors about the provenance of the fire, and it’s much easier to stoke gossip with a little inside information. And... there’s something strangely compelling about seeing the damage with his own eyes.
By the time Crowley arrives, the city has more or less returned to what passes for normal, and the great library is ashes. He stands outside its charred skeleton, mouth twisted in a frown. It’s just a building, its destroyed contents a collection of information spanning from “not quite right” to “as wrong as it’s physically possible to be”. Crowley has no particular affinity for this building, for anything in Alexandria, but there’s a pull of some formless longing within him, like a visceral sense memory that’s gone before you can identify its genesis.
He shakes his head and wonders vaguely where the nearest tavern is. He’s turning to leave when there’s a heavy thud followed by a familiar string of not-quite curses from somewhere within the crumbling stone walls.
“Aziraphale?” he calls, picking his way through the wreckage toward the noise.
“Over here, my dear.”
Crowley braces one hand on a section of wall so he can step over what might have once been a table but is now kindling, and his fingers come away black with soot. He narrows his eyes at the impudence, and the soot obligingly vanishes.
The remaining stone structure is closed off from what little sunlight penetrates the ash-heavy clouds above, but as Crowley makes his way through the wreckage, he finds there is somehow enough light for even humans to see by. It’s not the soft, warm light of torches, but rather the sterile white light of the divine. It spills out from a doorway up ahead, and Crowley heads toward its source.
He finds Aziraphale kneeling in the ashes of a large chamber that must have housed the library’s main collection. The angel is streaked with soot from head to toe, sifting methodically through the debris with the single-minded devotion he usually reserves for rich food and drink or reviewing some latest acquisition. His cuticles are peeling, carefully kept hands caked in grime.
Crowley watches in silence for a while. Aziraphale doesn’t seem to notice his presence, just keeps inspecting charcoal briquettes that might have once been tomes. Crowley clears his throat, but Aziraphale doesn’t look up.
Finally, Crowley exhales and says, “What are you doing, Aziraphale?”
“I should think that would be obvious.” Aziraphale pushes aside a bit of broken shelving, fishing for something slightly less blackened that’s trapped underneath.
“You know you’re not going to find anything.”
“Do I?” Aziraphale says mildly. The scrap in his hands gleams for a moment, bathing Aziraphale’s face in golden light, and then it expands into a full sheet of papyrus. The newly repaired areas are blank, Crowley can see - apparently not even a miracle can restore text without knowing what it once said.
Aziraphale peers at it, a deep-set wrinkle in his brow, and then he sets it aside. “How kind of you to remind me of the futility of existence,” he says, looking up at Crowley now. “I shall endeavor at once to restrict myself to profound cynicism, as you do.” There’s no bite to the words, but there is something like defeat creeping in at the edges of his voice.
“Let me buy you a drink,” Crowley says. He cracks a smile and adds, “Provided I can find a tavern that’s still standing.”
“That seems to be the first thing people rebuild,” Aziraphale says dryly. “No thank you; I think I’ll keep searching a bit longer.” He shuffles forward and cards his fingers through the ashes.
Something vaguely and irrationally guilty twists in Crowley’s gut. He’d had nothing to do with the Caesar or any of the fighting. Sure, he’d maybe suggested to a couple of Senators that ole Jules was looking a bit high and mighty and maybe they should consider taking him down a peg, but most of them had been thinking that already. The emperor himself reminded Crowley a bit too much of some of the more ambitious demons he’d known, and so he had mostly tried to keep his distance.
“This wasn’t me, you know,” Crowley says, the words out of his mouth before he’s made the conscious choice to utter them. “Not just the library, but the whole civil war. You know me; I’ve mostly been getting drunk at Bacchanals.”
“I know,” says Aziraphale.
“I’m sorry,” Crowley offers.
Aziraphale sits back on his heels and lets out a long, slow breath. Even surrounded by ruin and covered in its ashes, there is something radiant about him, like a glimmer of metal half buried in sand that catches the light. He’s always been beautiful in some undefinable, divine way, but it’s different here, in the charred remains of Alexandria’s great library. It’s not that he glows bright among the wreckage, although he does. He just… belongs here, more so than he ever did cast in Heaven’s glow.
He frowns at the light-colored bit of papyrus, stark against the rubble, and then he gets to his feet. In a blink, he’s pristine again, like the ashes never touched him. “Well,” he says, brushing dirt that’s no longer there from his clothes, “there’s a rather more complete collection in Bagdad anyway. I believe you said something about a drink?” He makes his way out of the library, the light he’d conjured dimming behind him.
Crowley follows him out.
--
Rome is burning.
It’s been burning for days, and there’s no controlling the flames that ravage the city. There is nothing here but destruction, an all too familiar press of scorching heat and panicked screams, the stench of burning flesh, and the acrid, sulphurous smoke that stings Crowley’s eyes and crawls down his throat, even as he struggles to remember not to breathe. The flames can’t hurt him, not really, but his whole body is burning anyway, every inch screaming for escape.
He ducks out of the way of a collapsing market stall, and it hits the ground in a shower of sparks that catch on his robes and ignite. He barely spares a thought to put them out, already rounding the next corner. It’s impossible to see through the smoke and the flames, so Crowley’s relying on his occult senses and the firm belief that the road will take him where he wants to go. There’s no need for faith when you’d seen the world’s creation, but there are things Crowley does believe in -- that the universe will ultimately take care of him, that humans contain at once more good and more evil than Heaven or Hell could ever hope for.
Aziraphale.
There’s a deafening bang from across the road and then one of the buildings starts to crumble, chunks of stone digging craters as they hit the street. Crowley dodges one that comes a bit too close, but it throws up a spray of dirt and gravel that hits him in the face before he can bring up an arm to block it. It’s a hundred little pinpricks of heat and pain, but Crowley barely even notices.
It’s a fool’s errand, he knows that. But he can’t leave yet, not until he’s sure. It would be just like that stubborn idiot of an angel to get himself discorporated trying to protect some old clay tablets. He’d be back on Earth eventually, brand new corporation for his immortal form, but that might take decades.
Crowley doesn’t want to spend them alone.
He turns another corner, skirting an overturned cart that’s still yoked to the limp body of a horse. Only a few more streets, a left and then a right and --
“Crowley!” Out of the smoke, Aziraphale comes barreling toward him, lit up with something more than just firelight. He stops just short of actually colliding with Crowley, pulling his outstretched hands back at the last moment to wring in front of himself instead. “Thank goodness,” Aziraphale says. He sounds out of breath, like he’d been running too. “I was afraid you were still in the palace when it collapsed.”
A flood of emotion courses through Crowley so swiftly that he doesn’t even try to conceal the giddy grin that breaks out on his face. “Aziraphale!” he says, and his voice is far, far too honest, relief spilling over the edges. He attempts to rein it in, affecting a more teasing tone. “You were worried about me, huh?”
Aziraphale goes a little pink, blush not quite hidden in the flickering firelight that engulfs the city around them. “Well, you know,” he blusters, confident tone betrayed by the little wrinkle in his brow, “I’m so used to the way you operate, and it would be far too much trouble if your superiors sent a different demon to Earth while you were discorporated.”
Crowley nods as if this makes perfect sense. “You were worried about me.”
Aziraphale just scowls at him. “Heaven knows why,” he huffs. “This whole thing was probably your doing. They’re saying Nero started it, to build a new palace, and I know you’ve been whispering in his ear.”
Crowley had, in fact, been spending a great deal of time with the emperor and had, perhaps, encouraged a sin or two, but most of the more heinous ideas were entirely Nero’s doing. Crowley got credit from his superiors simply from proximity, and having the ear of the emperor was quite a lavish life. “I didn’t tell him to burn the place down,” he says. The protest is rather halfhearted, mostly because he knows Aziraphale is just deflecting, and Crowley can’t decide whether he’s pleased or stung by it. “Hell might go in for all that fire and brimstone business, but I don't.”
“I know, I know,” Aziraphale says, waving a vague hand at him.
Somewhere off to the side of them, another market stall collapses, but the debris gives them both a wide berth. “What the hell,” Crowley says, “and I mean that literally, are you still doing here anyway?”
Aziraphale lifts his chin and meets Crowley’s eyes, a glint of challenge in his own. “I could ask the same of you, my dear.”
Crowley’s not brave, not about anything that really matters, but he’s not afraid of this. Aziraphale has always been a blazing point of heat and light, drawing Crowley in with something stronger than gravity, too strong for his occult powers to deflect. It’s a fact of the universe, a facet of Crowley’s nature like the pilot light that burns within him.
Still, Crowley’s not cruel. He turns his face away like he can’t stand to maintain Aziraphale’s all-too-knowing eye contact and lets his gaze go distant. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”
Aziraphale isn’t brave either.
--
“Do you know,” Aziraphale says over the rim of his wine glass, mouth turned down in a sour little frown, “I’m getting rather sick of all these wars.”
Then you shouldn’t have given away your sword, Crowley thinks but does not say. It wouldn’t have made a difference; everything comes down to violence with humans eventually. “Isn’t this one your side’s doing? Crusading in the name of Christ and all that?”
“That would seem to be a logical assumption,” Aziraphale says carefully, not meeting Crowley’s eyes. “They’re quite pleased with the whole thing, gathering lost sheep into the flock as it were. I’m due to receive a commendation for it, actually. Something about remarkable dedication to furthering the cause at any cost.” He sips at his wine, almost certainly a nicer vintage than the one that had been poured by the tavern keeper, and Crowley peers at him through narrowed eyes.
“You had nothing to do with it, did you?” Crowley just manages to hold back a peal of delighted laughter. “You just let the humans go at each other and stood by to take credit? I think I’m impressed, angel.”
Aziraphale’s cheeks go pink, and he lifts his chin, scowling down his nose at Crowley. “Oh, as if you haven’t done the exact same thing,” he says imperiously. “Jerusalem comes to mind.”
“Yes, but I’m a demon,” Crowley points out. “Lying is one of the big ten for us.”
“I’d hardly call it a lie,” Aziraphale says. “I may have… implied a certain degree of responsibility, but I can assure you, I bore no false witness.”
Crowley does laugh now, at the familiar absurdity of Aziraphale’s Gordian knot of justifications. Aziraphale is still scowling, but the corner of his lip is twitching like it’s thinking about smiling. “I may have ‘implied a certain degree of responsibility’ on my end as well,” Crowley says. “Violence goes over well Down There. Killing in the name of God is still killing as far as they’re concerned.”
“But still in the name of God.” Aziraphale says. “As far as my people are concerned.”
Crowley’s not sure that should make a difference - taking a life is still taking a life, no matter whose name you do it in. But then, it’s exactly the sort of accidental, ironic blasphemy that humans are so good at. Hypocrisy is a subtle sin, far too subtle for Hell to appreciate, which is probably for the best. If hypocrisy could send a being to Hell, there would be very few angels left in Heaven.
“Works out well for both of us then,” Crowley says. He stretches out, tipping his chair back onto two legs and sips at his wine. He glances around at the other patrons in the tavern, the usual assortment of drunkards and laborers. There’s a nicely dressed man by the bar leaning over a young girl whose eyes keep flickering toward the door, and Crowley turns his wine into water.
“I thought we agreed we weren’t working tonight,” Aziraphale huffs, and the front legs of Crowley’s chair hit the floor with a loud thud.
“Sorry,” Crowley says, even though he isn’t. “Couldn’t help myself.” At the bar, the nicely-dressed man takes a drink from his cup and then immediately turns to yell at the barmaid behind the counter. The girl he’d been harrassing takes the opportunity to slip out of the tavern unnoticed. “Demon, you know.”
“Yes,” says Aziraphale, a wry arch in his brow. “Quite.”
--
The stench of death permeates the city, the entire continent, seeping into the bones of every building, and Crowley has never been so grateful for his corporation’s human tongue. Remembering not to breathe mitigates the worst of it, but it sinks into Crowley’s pores and clings to him like a constant reminder. He almost pities the serpents, that the smell should settle heavy on their tongues when they taste the air.
Sunlight filters in through the dirty windows of Aziraphale’s shop, illuminating the dust motes that hang in the air. Crowley clutches his wine glass, half listening to Aziraphale natter about something or other, and inhales carefully in the only place he can breathe without gagging. The air is stale and a little musty, but nothing is dying here. As Crowley’s lungs expand with it, he can pretend for a moment that outside of this room, the whole world isn’t dying around them.
“Crowley?” Aziraphale says, and Crowley looks up to find the angel peering at him curiously. His hand hangs in the space between them, like he’d started to reach for Crowley and then thought better of it. “Are you alright?”
Probably not, Crowley doesn’t say. He shrugs and drains the rest of his wine. He’s not quite drunk yet, but nearing it, thoughts beginning to slip frictionless through his mind like fine sand through fingers. “‘m fine.”
Aziraphale frowns, and his face is so deeply lined that for a moment, Crowley imagines he can read all five thousand years there, a wrinkle for every century they’d spent on Earth. “I can talk about something else if you’d prefer.”
“I said it’s fine.”
“It’s just I’d hate to think I’m boring you.”
Crowley’s wine glass obligingly refills itself. He glares at it moodily for a moment before muttering, “Might as well; everything else is,” and downing it in one.
Something complicated and unreadable flickers over Aziraphale’s face. “I could read to you?” he offers uncertainly. “Song of Songs, if you’d like.”
Proper concern verging on pity then, Crowley thinks. Aziraphale often reads aloud while Crowley lounges, but he usually skips the Songs of Solomon. Not because he has anything against the book, but because Crowley tends to jeer at the racier bits. Aziraphale always reads so earnestly, so reverently, and Crowley’s not sure he could stand to hear the Songs without some kind of buffer. It’s not meant for him, the devotion Aziraphale puts into those words, and Crowley’s not quite masochistic enough to pretend it is.
“Nah,” Crowley says. He tips his head back to rest on the top edge of the settee and stares up at the ceiling without really seeing it, empty wine glass dangling loosely in one hand.
“Well, what do you want then?” Aziraphale snaps. Patience may well be a virtue of saints, but it doesn’t come standard for angels. “You’re under no obligation to stay if my presence is so dreadfully dull.”
What Crowley would really like is a nice, long nap, maybe for the rest of the century. To just check out for a while and wake up when the flood waters have receded. Only he’s not entirely certain he’d wake again. He can’t remind his corporation that it doesn’t need to breathe, that it can’t catch ill if he’s unconscious, and Hell is a worse prison than boredom by far. They’d probably have another commendation lined up for the panic-fueled exterminations of innocent people, or worse, a promotion that would keep him Down There indefinitely.
He takes another slow, careful breath. It smells like dust and bookbinding glue and old wine, comfortable and familiar. Nothing is dying here. “Nowhere better to be.”
Aziraphale settles back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, and lets out a sigh. “I never know what to do with you when you get like this,” he says.
Crowley shrugs. Maybe he’ll spend a few decades right here, collecting accolades from Hell for humanity’s more innovative cruelties and memorizing the pattern of cracks in Aziraphale’s ceiling. Top himself up with wine from time to time to maintain this blank stillness that’s settled within him.
Distantly, he can hear Aziraphale breathing, the occasional heavy sigh, the soft rasp of pages turning. He wonders vaguely what it is Aziraphale is reading, but the thought slips away before he can get ahold of it to ask. He lets himself drift, not quite awake but not asleep either. He’s somewhere outside of himself, a delicate wisp of smoke that could be dispersed by even a gentle breeze.
Sometime later, Aziraphale says, “Why don’t you lie down, hmm?” His voice sounds far away, muffled, like he’s speaking from across the street, not just across the room, and it takes a moment to wend its way through the void of Crowley’s mind.
It takes even longer for Crowley to remember how to move his limbs, how to lift his head against the heavy press of gravity. He’d thought the settee was quite short, but as he sprawls out along it, he finds it easily accommodates his long legs. It’s softer than he remembers, too, and there’s a cushion beneath his head that definitely wasn’t there before.
Crowley’s eyes slip closed, and he breathes, slow and deep and regular. “‘m gonna take a nap,” he mumbles on an exhale.
“Alright,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley does.
--
Crowley is drunk for the fifth or sixth day straight - or maybe it’s the seventh. The days are all starting to run together like wet paint, and there have been so many of them. Thousands - millions, probably, and Crowley has seen every single one of them, simultaneously untouched by time and staggering under its weight.
He’s sprawled nearly horizontal against the wall in an out-of-the-way corner of a tavern that doesn’t ask questions and won’t kick him out so long as he continues to fork over enough coins pulled from raw firmament. Empty bottles litter the floor around him as well as a few that are still half full of cheap wine. It’s far more than any normal human body could take, but for Crowley, it’s still not quite enough.
He takes a pull off the closest bottle, hands shaking so badly than wine drips down his chin and soaks into his clothes. He doesn’t bother to wipe it off. It’s far from the only stain Crowley bears, indelible brands even a miracle can’t wash away. He has no idea what time of day it is, or even what time of year, but there are few other patrons in the tavern, just a low rumble of quiet conversation and muted sounds from the street outside to fill the silence.
A clatter of knocked over glass rings through the tavern, too sharp and too loud. It’s followed by a very prim, “Oh dear,” and the sound of breaking glass. Crowley squints up through bleary eyes at the pristine form of an angel standing over him, overbright and alien in this dark place.
“Crowley!” Aziraphale cries, voice tinged with relief or maybe just pity. He kneels down, heedless of the broken glass and spilled wine, and then there are warm hands cupping Crowley’s face, straightening his clothes, tugging the bottle from his loose grasp. Crowley hisses reflexively, but Aziraphale just tuts at him. “This is excessive, my dear, even for you.”
An arm slides around Crowley’s waist, hauling him to his feet. He sways unsteadily, but Aziraphale keeps a tight hold on him, bearing most of his weight with a divine strength that seems at odds with his soft, rounded exterior. “Come on, there’s a good lad,” Aziraphale murmurs and shuffles the two of them toward the tavern door.
“Now,” Aziraphale says, once he’s wrangled the two of them into a carriage and given an address to the driver, “do you want to tell me what’s got you in such a state? You usually invite me to your little parties.”
Crowley slumps against the back of the carriage bench, wishing vaguely for unconsciousness. He doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t even want to think about it, or anything else for that matter, just wants to carry on drinking himself into a stupor until he can’t remember anymore why he started.
“Spain,” he croaks instead, because if anyone deserves an explanation, it’s Aziraphale. “Got a comem - cominashun.”
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale says softly.
“I di’n’t though,” Crowley says, looking up at Aziraphale with wide, earnest eyes. “I ‘as in a diff’ren’ part. M’deira.”
“I know, dear.” Aziraphale leans over to skim his fingertips across Crowley’s cheek, brushing a greasy, matted lock of hair off of his face, and Crowley shivers. An angel’s caress burns, the younger demons are told, their Grace calling to the ruined wreck that remains after the Fall, but Aziraphale’s never has.
“‘S for your side. Tha’s what they’re saying.”
“So I’ve heard,” Aziraphale says, shifting a little so Crowley can rest his head in Aziraphale’s lap. He carries on carding his fingers through Crowley’s filthy hair, brushing the pad of his thumb against Crowley’s cheekbone every so often. He touches Crowley so tenderly, like Crowley is something precious, something dear, something worthy of reverence.
Crowley finally passes out. He wakes three days later in Aziraphale’s flat, alone but for the memory of Aziraphale’s touch.
--
The air raid sirens sound just as Aziraphale is pouring their second bottle of wine. He startles, spattering the table and his crisp, white shirt sleeve with burgundy. “Confound this blasted war,” he grouses and reaches for a napkin to clean it up.
Crowley twists his hand in the air, and the spilled wine vanishes. Aziraphale frowns down at his sleeve, but he pours the wine and hands Crowley a glass. The siren is still going, screaming its warning into the otherwise quiet night. Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale bothers to move - they’re safe enough in the back room of Aziraphale’s bookshop.
Aziraphale glares down at his glass, or maybe at his sleeve, as Crowley sips his wine. “I do wish they’d desist with that awful noise,” Aziraphale says. He’s wearing a sour expression that Crowley recognizes as the precursor to a full blown snit, and Crowley nudges up the alcohol content of his wine just in case.
Truthfully, Crowley’s had about enough of the air raid sirens as well. He’s been rudely awoken from what was supposed to be a week-long nap several times now, and the threat of impending oblivion isn’t having quite the free-for-all sinning effect he’d been hoping for. There are no atheists in the trenches, or cowering in their bomb shelters either, apparently. “They’ve got to be loud enough to warn everybody, angel; you know that.”
“I daresay the Continent too is well-warned,” Aziraphale says huffily. “They’re probably hiding in their sheds in America.” He takes a drink of his wine, swallows, and then continues, “And do you know they’re cutting sugar rations again? It’s hardly enough for tea at this rate, never mind baking.”
“You’re an angel,” Crowley reminds him. “Just miracle it.”
“That is cheating, and anyway, that’s not the point. I don’t expect you to care about what other people are going through, but I am an angel, and that is my job.” Crowley just drinks his now-fortified wine, which is well on its way to brandy. He's far too used to Aziraphale’s snobby self-righteousness for it to rankle. “That charming little bakery on Berwick, you know the one that does those fantastic bakewell tarts? They’re probably going to have to close because they can’t keep up supply. Heaven knows what Barbara will do now, of course. She’ll probably have to move, poor dear - not that I would expect you to care about that either.”
Maybe it’s the alcohol, or the air raid sirens, the bombs or the constant panic or the false bravado painted on every face in the country, but something hot and angry simmers in Crowley’s stomach. If Aziraphale wants a fight, then Crowley will bloody well give him one. “What do you want me to do about it?” he snaps venomously. “I didn’t start the fucking war.”
“I know that,” Aziraphale says, rolling his eyes. “I’m just saying--”
“You always say that, ‘I know’. You don’t know!” Crowley’s on his feet now, nearly shouting as words spill out of him like foam down the side of a pot that’s boiled over. “I’m a demon. As you’re so fond of reminding me, demons lie.”
Aziraphale scoffs. “It’s been six thousand years; you think I don’t know when you’re lying?”
“I think you know if I want you to know--”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous.”
“I was in Germany for part of the last one; I could have set it up!”
Aziraphale’s expression goes cold, his eyes flinty. “Do you even know half of what’s going on over there? Not the war, not the fighting, but the things they’re doing to people, innocent people?”
Crowley has learned the hard way not to go looking into the things Hell’s handing out commendations for. “No, but -”
“I know what you’re capable of, Crowley,” Aziraphale says sharply, “and it is not that.”
Crowley hesitates, caught out by Aziraphale’s furious expression. He’s a barely-contained winter storm, frigid winds and shards of ice, and Crowley knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wants absolutely nothing to do with whatever is happening in Germany. “Okay,” he says, quietly. He puts his hands up. “Okay, you’re right. But there are lots of other things I could have done and, for all you know, did.”
Aziraphale lets out a long slow breath, all the fight draining out of him, and slumps back in his chair. “What’s this really about, Crowley?”
“It’s not about anything,” Crowley says petulantly, narrowly resisting the urge to point out that Aziraphale had started the argument in the first place. “I’m just saying, maybe I did start that fire in Rome.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“But I could have!” There’s something buzzing just beneath Crowley’s skin, hot and prickling. “I’ve done plenty of proper evil in my time, tempted humans to all sorts of wickedness.”
“Alright,” says Aziraphale in an agreeable tone that is almost certainly a trap. “Tell me of your wicked ways, oh Serpent of Eden. What’s the worst thing you’ve tempted someone to do or done yourself? And none of that widespread, low grade nonsense you sell to your superiors - something that even comes close to what humans do to each other.”
“I’d say inventing sin in the first place is pretty well up there,” Crowley says.
Aziraphale just gives him an arch look. “That hardly makes you responsible for every sin since then.”
And honestly, Crowley tries not to think about it -- there’s too much in the last six thousand years that Crowley would prefer to forget ever happened. Not all of it is Crowley’s fault -- but some of it is. He swallows hard against a wave of nausea that rises in his stomach. “I’ve killed,” he says finally, voice unexpectedly soft.
“Self defense doesn’t count.”
Crowley shakes his head. “Not self defense. Assassinations. Murders.” He’s not quite sure why it’s so important that Aziraphale see the charred remains of the angel that Fell, that he believe there is an ugly, twisted core of him. Aziraphale sees what he wants to see, always has, and he carves his opinions in stone. “They weren’t all soldiers. Some of them were… They were just… innocent.” He swallows again, acid sharp in the back of his throat.
“Mothers and children, hmm?” Crowley doesn’t answer, just stares down at his hands, curled into fists and trembling. “Do you remember them all, Crowley?”
Crowley looks up then, and Aziraphale is stalking toward him like an apex predator. His expression is deceptively calm, eyes hard. His voice has gone low, soft, but with a steel edge. He is every inch the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, a warrior angel prepared to smite any creature of Hell. “Do you remember how they died? What it looked like when they breathed their last, when the light faded from their eyes?” He leans in, mere inches between them, and Crowley can’t breathe, forgets he doesn’t have to. “Do you remember their faces?”
Demons have a knack for faces, but there are some Crowley will never forget, faces that flit through his nightmares and follow him down into every bottle. “Yes,” he whispers, caught still in Aziraphale’s marble gaze.
And then abruptly, Aziraphale’s expression clears. The warrior angel is gone, and he’s just himself again, a stuffy, rumpled bookseller wearing a faintly knowing smile. “That’s how I know,” he says simply. He returns to his armchair and sits down, sipping delicately at his wine.
Crowley’s not sure what to say to that.
--
The apocalypse comes and goes, and the world doesn’t end.
Crowley half expects some sort of endless infernal torment as punishment for his role in the whole thing, but in the weeks that follow, things are surprisingly… normal. A new normal, anyway, where he and Aziraphale continue to see each other for lunch, at the theatre, in the park. Not to compare notes on the rearing of the antichrist, but just for the pleasure of each other’s company, and anyway, they’d rather gotten into the habit.
The Bentley pulls up outside of Aziraphale’s bookshop, largely of its own volition. Crowley’s turned sideways on the bench to face Aziraphale, broad grin on his face and defensive hands up between them. “I’m telling you, angel, it wasn’t me!”
Aziraphale huffs out a breath and crosses his arms over his chest. “Do you really expect me to believe that the first chair of the London Symphony Orchestra simply forgot to tune his violin?”
Crowley shrugs. “Humans make mistakes,” he says, just barely keeping the laughter bubbling up inside of him from spilling out.
“They are professionals, Crowley!”
“Professionals make mistakes!” And okay, yes, it’s possible Crowley may have nudged a string or two a hair out of tune right before the violin concerto’s main solo, but Aziraphale doesn’t need to know that. It’s far too much fun to wind him up, watch him lose that prim, angelic exterior to reveal the bit of bastard within. “Why would I ruin a show I was there to see?”
Without waiting for an answer, Crowley slides out of the car and crosses round the front to the other side. He opens the passenger side door, and Aziraphale climbs out, already mid-sentence.
“--I was hardly going to sit at home for a hundred years because you wanted a nap,” he says, evidently not have bothered to pause just because Crowley moved out of earshot. “Honestly, you act as if Pyotr and I had some scandalous affair. You get the same way about Oscar.”
“I keep telling you I have nothing against Tchaikovsky,” Crowley says, which is perhaps not entirely true. “I have no idea where you’ve gotten this idea that I hate Tchaikovsky.”
Aziraphale just tuts at him. He unlocks the bookshop and holds the door open for Crowley to enter. “No one’s that fond of Brahms, my dear. Jealousy does not become you.”
“Not sure what there is to be jealous of,” Crowley says petulantly as they make their way to the backroom of the bookshop. “Considering he’s dead and I’m not.” And that’s the way it always goes, eventually. Crowley likes humans generally, likes the things they’ve invented and the world they’ve made for themselves, but it’s just not practical to get too attached to them individually.
Aziraphale rolls his eyes and retrieves a bottle of Bordeaux from the liquor cabinet. He uncorks it and pours while Crowley settles himself on the worn, tartan sofa. If is, of course, absolutely hideous, but at least if he’s sitting on it, he doesn’t have to look at it. Aziraphale hands him a glass of wine before moving to the armchair sat across from the sofa, and Crowley sips at it experimentally. It’s a surprisingly decent vintage for having been restored into being by an eleven-year-old.
They drink, and they talk. It’s comfortable, six thousand years of history between them and who knows how many ahead. And there would be more, an endless number of years stretched out before them like an ocean without a horizon. Years of rich lunches and afternoons in the park, years of wine and conversation, years of just the two of them, together, wiling and thwarting the time away with the only being in the universe who could ever understand.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley says, only vaguely aware that he’s interrupted the angel mid-sentence. His voice comes out too rough, low and a bit desperate. Aziraphale studies him, eyebrows drawn together in concern, and Crowley can’t not say it anymore. He clears his throat and takes off his sunglasses, meeting Aziraphale’s eyes with his own bare gaze. “I--” he starts, sounding just as wrecked, but the words get stuck in his throat. Six thousand years is a long time not to say something, to push the words down and down until you nearly forgot them. But Crowley remembers standing on the tarmac, remembers how Adam looked at him and knew absolutely everything, right down to the firmament. He remembers Aziraphale’s hand, warm in his, and six thousand years of I know, I know, I know. “Aziraphale, you know I love you, right?”
Aziraphale smiles at him over the rim of his glass. It’s a small thing, soft and quiet, like he’s indulging in some private amusement. “I know.”
Crowley’s eyes go wide - he’d expected a token protest at least - and Aziraphale lets out a little laugh. “Don’t look so surprised, darling; you know angels can sense love. Did you think I wouldn’t sense it from you?” His voice goes soft, sun-warm and unbearably fond. “I know you, you old serpent,” he says, and yes, of course Aziraphale knows, has always known. Of course. Adam might have looked at Crowley and seen the whole of him in an instant, but what was that against someone willing to spend eternity learning it, detail by detail like scattered breadcrumbs?
“You know I love you, too,” Aziraphale says simply. It isn’t a question because of course Crowley knows, has always known. Aziraphale’s been telling him for millennia, in a million different tiny ways, every “I know” its own confession.
“Yes,” Crowley says, and there is sunlight inside of him, warm and bright and spilling out of him until everything is aglow with it. “I know.”