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The thing was—the thing was—Crowley should have handled it better. He'd had six thousand years (give or take), an Apocalypse that hadn't happened, a Rebellion, and some time in Heaven before time had been invented to get used to denial, to rejection. Most of that, though not all of it, from Aziraphale.
But he'd had a taste of what life could be like: the life he wanted, the life he'd never dreamed he could have. Not completely; he'd lost his flat, though it'd never truly been home, just a place to return to, and most of his plants, his Mona Lisa, the lectern from 1941. He'd lived in their the Bentley.
We don’t have a car.
Yes, we do. And isn't she a beaut!
But he'd been able to see Aziraphale whenever he wanted, without having to find an excuse. He didn't have to wheedle and tempt to get Aziraphale to come along with him. Sometimes it was, even, Aziraphale who initiated. Most of his days had been spent at the bookshop, scaring away prospective customers and lounging on their—the—sofa.
And then Gabriel had come, and taken it all away.
Hear that? No nightingales.
No more dinners at the Ritz, or little cafes that knew Aziraphale wasn't quite human because he'd been going there since they opened generations ago. No more days, weeks, spent without his sunglasses on.
No more ‘my dear boys’ or baffling dances.
You can tell me… while we dance.
…You don’t dance.
It had all come crumbling down in minutes. Jim had become Gabriel again; he and Beelzebub had fucked off to Alpha Centauri where he'd tried so hard to take Aziraphale; the Metatron had offered Aziraphale a promotion, and that was that.
You can be an angel again.
You can be my second in command.
I need you!
Obviously you wouldn’t rejoin Hell. You're evil.
Aziraphale had said what he'd known all along. He wanted Crowley, yes. But Crowley-the-Angel. Kabaiel. The starmaker.
Not Crowley-the-demon. Crawly. The tempter.
And Crowley was not known for making good decisions, besides. He drank laudanum-laced wine to keep a human from killing herself, nannied who he thought was the Antichrist instead of any of the many other, more reasonable, things they could have done, exploded with lightning in the middle of SoHo, turned the M25 that he drove on every day into a demonic sigil which later burst into hellfire with him on it, and invented women’s pants’ pockets despite wearing women’s pants.
So, no. Crowley didn't handle it well. It would be easier to say he didn’t handle it at all.
Still a demon?
His head buzzed, the throb of the music rattling his teeth. He wasn’t sure what he was drinking, but it burned on the way down.
This wasn’t the pub he’d hidden at during the End of the World That Didn’t. Lights flashed and humans moved in a sea of bodies. He couldn’t remember what the name of it was, but no one noticed him and that made it good enough. It was only easy to get in, pay Elsie, then slip into his own world as the high buzzed into his veins.
Still, he expected to see Aziraphale across from him. Translucent, corporationless. Could hear him sometimes,
Did you go to Alpha Centauri?
“No,” he said, loud enough someone nearby looked over at him, “I changed my mind… Stuff happened. I lost my best friend.”
Over and over and over again.
In 1862, over a stupid fight. The bandstand. When Aziraphale had turned him away at the bookshop at the End of It All. When he’d been discorporated, the few times he’d been before.
And now. This time, it seemed, was permanent. Aziraphale had made that quite clear.
Oh Crowley, nothing lasts forever.
He reached for Aziraphale, but Aziraphale was gone. His hand hovered in the air for a moment, then thudded to the table.
“Where’re you?”
Wherever you are, I’ll come to you. Where are you?
Crowley pushed himself to his feet, staggering. His head swam in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Smoke clogged the air. Cigarette, others that were much less legal, though at the moment, far more appealing. The alcohol that was tacky against the bottoms of his snakehide boots was sweet enough to rot teeth and strong as paint thinner. He could see humans passing things between each other, taking advantage of the flashing lights to go unseen, their pupils blown wide and hands trembling.
This was the sort of place Aziraphale would hate. There was no well-aged brandy on offer, no wine, and even a miracle couldn’t turn what they had into something palatable. And certainly, no one was dancing the gavotte, or a sweeping room-roaming regency dance as they’d done at Aziraphale’s ridiculous little ball.
This was the sort of place Crowley had found himself at so many times over the centuries, the millennia. All the way back to the fall of Ancient Greece. Before, in fact. When the world got too busy and too loud and he needed to find somewhere where he could vanish into the crowd; when he couldn’t blink without seeing his stars whipping past him as his wings burnt and he needed to go somewhere that wouldn’t let him focus on anything else; when his skin felt too-tight and wrong and he feared when he looked he’d find himself covered in scales and he needed somewhere dark where he couldn’t fall into his own head. Aziraphale had met him at one, once,
Still a demon?
But that had hardly been like this one, like the ones he’d favored after.
‘Still a demon’? What else am I gonna be, an aardvark?
He shook his head, stumbling. It wasn’t such a strange question. He might’ve been a snake, after all. Aziraphale had seen him like that, back in the Garden. Had stroked his head and told him how fine his scales were, how striking his red belly was. When he’d thought him just another serpent, Mother-made for Eden.
The Angel of the Northern Gate had known, though. Or maybe they’d just been a prick with a sword-complex. They’d tried to take his head off for the sin of slithering too close to them. Aziraphale always had been the best of that entire Host of Bastards.
Hell. He missed Aziraphale.
Hell, but his high was wearing off so quickly.
A human bumped into him, giggling. Alcohol stank on their breath, their pupils blown wide.
He flicked down his sunglasses and hissed.
“Oh!” They gasped, leaning in, “What stunning contacts!”
Crowley reared back, stunned.
“They really suit you!” The human smiled, patting him on the chest with a fumbling hand. Then, they vanished into the crowd.
He’d never understand humans.
Aziraphale had. He might have been stagnant, still wearing the same clothes he’d loved a century or two ago. Might still have preferred the music of the same, and made a damn fool of himself talking to the humans. But he’d known them. He’d been Maggie’s landlord, her parent’s landlord before her, and evidently a decent friend to both. Knew everyone on his street by name, and they knew him.
He wasn’t terribly good at blending in, but he knew them in a way Crowley never had.
Crowley might have kept up with the times. He adopted the fashions as quickly as they came and shed them before they could go out of fashion. Set the trends, sometimes, though not always on purpose. He was quite clever at finding ways to inconvenience humans (and often himself) with the new things humans came up with—
Evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction
—and always had the new things: a car, a fancy flat, a TV when they came out, color before it had, an ansaphone when those were just a patent. But humans remained an enigma to him. They were always ‘book girl’ and ‘coffeeshop girl’ and ‘landlady’ and ‘military human’ because you can only remember so many names and so many faces.
He’d known humans in his life, of course. Yeshua, if he could be considered human, he’d shown the wonders of the world. A woman in Ur, a man in Ostia Antica. Others—many others. But humans, they were mayflies. Pretty to watch, but they burnt out so quickly. Born and grown and gone in a blink, in the time it took him to take a nap.
Not worth getting attached to, in the end. Even ones you went through great things with—the great-great-great granddaughter of a seer, the great-great-great grandson of a witchfinder, an antichrist and his friends and hellhound. Even they’d only live so long.
Aziraphale hadn’t viewed it that way.
He’d kept in contact with them, exchanged prophecy books with the book girl, and did… well, Crowley wasn’t sure what with the grandkid of the witchfinder. Played Godfather for the antichrist and his friends, making sure they kept their grades up and giving them gifts for holidays. Crowley tagged along, but only rarely when Aziraphale looked at him in that way—
he’d never been able to say no to Aziraphale
—and he’d say ‘Oh, why not?’ and bitch the entire time but it wasn’t bad, which was worse.
Crowley’d never seen Warlock again, because he couldn’t stand to watch the kid die. And that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Humans were always dying. They were born dying. And if Aziraphale was—had been—talking to the antichrist-that-wasn’t, Crowley didn’t know.
He didn’t know if Aziraphale had told them he was leaving, either. What he’d told them, if so. Or if he was still talking to them, sending them letters written on Heaven’s stationery in stardust ink, stamped with an Archangel’s seal.
I have lots of other people to fraternize with, angel.
Of course, he didn’t, though. He’d been lying through his teeth. Who would he fraternize with? Humans, who’d be dead in the time it took him to sneeze? Other demons, who’d stab him in the back for the offense of just asking if they wanted a drink? Angels?
No. It was Aziraphale who had other people to fraternize with. Crowley had humans he spoke to, that were useful enough, but never friends. Couldn’t be friends when they’d notice you weren’t aging. He’d always passed himself off as his own son, but can’t keep friends that way. Humans really were willing to believe anything if it meant they could ignore what was right under their own noses.
But Aziraphale, he’d been willing to suffer it. Love humans for that short bit of time they had. He’d always had people to fraternize with. Surely still did now.
Maggie, the coffee-shop-girl—Nina? No, they weren’t his. And Muriel was a fool angel, he only saw them when he checked on the bookshop.
These were his humans, Crowley thought as he tried to miracle away the need to piss. Found he was still a bit shy of being sober enough for it to come easily. His humans were the ones he tempted, that were glad to be tempted. They took themselves to Hell on their own, and did so gladly.
He and Aziraphale had been high-functioning alcoholics for nearly six thousand years. Crowley had swung between the different drugs as they came into, and fell out of, fashion. Opium had been popular all the way back in Rome. Peyote, mescalin, tobacco though he didn’t care for how it stained his fingernails and teeth if he didn’t remember to miracle them clean.
All the newer ones though, he thought they weren’t as appealing. Often, he’d taken them for work. Tempting through addiction was so easy it felt like cheating. Humans would ask him to try some before they’d accept it or, if it were something new, he’d try it out of curiosity, and to see how strong it was.
It wouldn’t have been the first time Hastur lied about how much would overdose a human.
Though he’d been quick to understand their appeal.
Because he saw Aziraphale everywhere. That pub they’d gone to a few times. That restaurant, and that one, and that one, that he’d taken Aziraphale to. The Ritz, Saint James’ Park. And there’d been no Aziraphale for him to crawl to when he was too sober to feel it, but not sober enough to miracle away how shit he felt. No flat where he could turn off all the lights and feel sorry for himself while he played some mindless phone game. Even the Bentley would play Queen loudly enough to make him ill.
“Mama, life had just begun,
“But now I've gone and thrown it all away
“Mama, ooh, didn't mean to make you cry!”
Crowley hung up the call, turning to the Bentley who growled a complaint and rolled a few steps away. “Quit it,” Crowley growled right back.
“How do you think I'm going to get along,
Without you, when you're gone?”
She kicked on suddenly, loudly enough the glass rattled in her windows. Crowley slammed his hand down on her hood, raising his voice just as loud, “You’re a car, what d’you know?”
“I'd sit alone and watch your light
My only friend through teenage nights
And everything I had to know
I heard it on my radio,”
He grabbed the door handle, yanking on it, then harder when she refused to give.
“You had your time, you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour,”
“I’ll walk,” he told the Bentley, letting go of her handle, “I’m perfectly fine with walking. Big walking fan, me.”
The Bentley’s engine whined. The door unlocked and swung open behind him. Crowley grinned, patting her roof fondly as he slipped into the driver’s seat. “See? Not so hard, yeah?”
“I try and I try and I try
But everybody wants to put me down,” she complained.
“Still a car,” he reminded, pulling away from the curb at a reckless speed, swinging impossibly into a small space between two cars.
You can’t go ninety miles per hour in Central London!
Watch him.
He slipped out of the Bentley, slamming her door behind him. When he snapped, the bouncer stared blankly at his ID, ignoring that it had a picture of a snake and a birthdate six-thousand years passed, and waved him in.
“I have spent all my years in believin' you,
So stick around 'cause we might miss you—
“—'cause we might miss you,
“—'cause we might miss you,”
Crowley weaved through the crowd. Humans. Sticky, stinky, horny humans.
Watching two humans, debatably male and only just old enough to drink grind against each other, he was not surprised in the least that the priest had wanted to meet here.
He made a b-line for the bar, where he could see a man in a vestment. There were several men (and women, and at least one who looked to be neither or gender-optional) wearing vestments, but theirs were clearly costumes. Baggy and ill-fitting, the collar often a choker or actual collar, one sequined from chasuble to alb. The vestment of the priest at the bar, sitting with a glass untouched in his hand, fit him like it had been tailored to him.
Crowley slithered into the seat beside him.
“Mr. Crowley,” said the priest in a grating, rather whiny voice. Crowley wondered how he’d react if someone spilled something on his perfectly ironed stole.
“Yeah,” he grunted back, waving over the bartender.
The priest smiled, a crowned tooth flashing. “This’d be yours, then,” he pulled the little bag from his pocket. Crowley took it, looking it over, then pulled the money (which was very surprised to find itself there, as it hadn’t been a moment ago) from his pocket and handed it to him.
The bar’s colored lights reflected off the priest’s bald head as he took, then immediately pocketed, it. He opened his mouth to speak, but Crowley grabbed his drink from the bartender, stuck the baggie in his pocket, and pushed away from the bar before he could.
He didn’t really feel like talking to a priest.
For a moment, Crowley thought he had a hangover from Hell.
Heaven?
Somewhere decidedly less celestially significant.
Then, when he tried to raise his hands and found they wouldn’t go very far from his sides, he thought he might be having sleep paralysis. He’d only had it a few times when he’d forgotten to clear his system before falling asleep, but it wasn't a dissimilar feeling.
He finally got his eyes to open.
The room around him was offensively white. There was nothing on the floor or the walls, not even a door. In fact, he wasn’t even in a chair—he was on the ground, he realized, legs in front of him. His arms were bound against him with rope—it felt almost like hemp rope, the same faint sapping of his strength, but stronger. Blessed?
He twisted, looking at the rope.
Blessed. It was the same blessed rope they’d used to tie down Aziraphale’s hands at his execution.
The outline of a door gleamed into being on the wall. Crowley squinted against the bright light—where had his sunglasses gone? He tried to straighten but his body was so slow to respond.
“Crowley, wasn’t it?” It took him a moment to place the voice, though the offensively, unnecessarily intricate hairstyle that came through the doorway he recognized immediately.
He tried to speak through the hemp gag.
Michael, lips glittering in a self-important way, smiled. It didn’t reach their eyes. “Sorry, what was that?” They stepped into the room, the priest at their heels.
The priest smiled, a creeping, nasty thing he recognized but couldn’t put a name to. A silver cross flashed from his teeth.
It was probably a good thing that Michael couldn’t understand what Crowley was saying as Sandalphon raised his hand to snap, the priest’s vestments replaced by an ill-fitting beige suit.
“Couldn’t have been that important,” Sandalphon said, adjusting the collar of his coat.
Crowley glowered from Michael to Sandolphon then back, working his jaw against the burn of the gag.
He’d gotten out of worse things than this. Admittedly, he was having a hard time thinking of one—bound in Heaven, at the feet of an Archangel—but he’d survived driving through a wall of hellfire in the Bentley, the apocalypse, the 14th century. He refused to survive all that, only to roll over and show his belly for Michael.
“You’re right,” Michael walked up until the tips of their shoes just brushed his boots. “These things never do say anything worth hearing. Now, demon.” Michael clasped their hands, looking incredibly like Gabriel had at Aziraphale’s execution. “I’ll make this quick, as I am a very busy Archangel.”
Crowley wondered if they could say Archangel like a normal being.
He also doubted that Michael could do anything quickly a day in their existence.
“Aziraphale,” he stiffened. Their grin spread wider, “now, how do you solve a problem like Aziraphale?
“How do you make him stay and listen to all you say, when he keeps getting distracted by his pet demon?”
Crowley made a show of rolling his eyes. Quoting The Sound of Music did not make them menacing, it made them look—and sound—ridiculous.
“We could just erase you from the Book of Life. It would be easy, you know. Just four strokes. Anthony J. Crowley. Crowley. Crawly. And, what was it?” They turned to Sandalphon.
“It was Kabaiel.” His old name sounded like ash on Sandalphon’s tongue, ridiculous in that simpering voice.
“Right,” They clapped their hands together again. Was there some Archangel training they had to go through? A handbook? Would Aziraphale start doing that? “And Kabaiel.”
Alright, that was worse. Sounded like how they said Archangel.
“But,” they stepped back and to the side, and Sandalphon stepped up to his elbow. “Well. That’s just not sporting, is it? Now, do you mind Sandalphon?”
Crowley grunted as Sandalphon stooped, grabbing him roughly by a bony elbow and pulling him up to kneel. He wavered, refusing to lose his balance and go down on his face at Michael’s feet.
on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life
And that was when he felt the burning.
Consecrated ground. It’s like being at the beach in bare feet.
He’d been lying when he said that to Aziraphale. If it was just like being at the beach in bare feet, he wouldn’t have been hopping around like a fool. Clutching his feet in front of the Nazis, trying to keep his weight off them.
It was more like walking on coals, fire irons maybe, with bare feet.
Crowley choked, barely catching himself before he reacted openly. He’d had worse—much worse. Times he’d been caught on Earth and outed as a demon, times a temptation had involved tempting a human to cruelty, punishments in Hell. But he could feel it pulling at his True Form, tearing at the weakened threads of it, frayed already by the hemp binding that still burned his skin.
“You might have survived the holy water,” Michael said, voice distorted. Flesh began to peel away from his kneecaps; he forced his breathing to remain even, “but I’m sure we have something that will work.”
Sandalphon wiped his hands on a handkerchief, wrinkling his nose. “Smells like evil,” he complained, at the same time Crowley turned into a snake.
The ground rushed towards him, scales spreading up from his feet. Red crept up his stomach, black everywhere else. His face bulged out, blunted, as his teeth sharpened. And—
Worse. It was so much worse.
What had burned at only his knees before now ate at the entirety of his underside. He shrank, hoping a lighter weight might make it less-worse, as he darted for where the door had been, dodging Sandalphon’s grasping hand. Then grew, bigger and bigger, until he was even bigger than he’d been in Eden, trying to lessen how much ground he’d have to cover.
The thin scales of his underjaw burnt through. He couldn’t restrain a wheezing, pained hiss. Sandalphon, a fool, managed to get a leg over him. Crowley twisted, whip-quick, and bit his arm. With a pained cry, Sandalphon jerked back, only just dodging Crowley’s next snapping bite.
Michael might have looked ridiculous, favoring a style that left their hair piled atop their head, glimmering makeup, and frilly sleeves. But they were the Archangel Michael for a reason. In a motion he barely caught they were beside him, and before he could even turn to them, hissing loudly, they’d run him through.
He hadn’t even seen them draw their sword. They must have at some point, though, because it had lodged fast in his ribs, pinning him to the ground. A dull burn, far more insidious than that from the shed hemp rope, even from the harsher consecrated ground, was already beginning to spread from it.
With a hiss that was more of a wheeze, he went lax. Turned human with great effort, twisting to grab the hilt. Michael’s heel came down on his hand, shattering the fragile bones. With a strength their frame belied, they pulled his arms behind him, wrapping the rope he’d left in a heap around his wrists.
His jaw hit the ground hard enough his teeth rattled when Michael dropped him. Their shoes clacked against the ground as they walked behind him, leaving his sightline. The room, blindingly white though stained garishly with his blood, spun when he tried to turn to follow them.
When they stepped back into his sightline, it was with Sandalphon at their side. They propped him up, though held him as far away as they could without dropping him, as though he were a disgusting bug or dirty animal. He staggered with his teeth bared, clutching his arm.
Crowley was darkly satisfied at the two holes in his sleeve dripping blood.
Neither said a word to him as they approached the wall. The door reappeared in a line of gold, then disappeared just as quickly once they’d stepped through it.
Sluggishly, Crowley worked his hands. But Michael had tied the rope tightly enough all he succeeded in doing was tear his skin. He was fairly certain the rope was cutting off his circulation.
Did he have circulation? Must have, considering he could bleed and his heart beat.
He grunted, disgusted, when his tongue slipped over, then through, the hole in his lower jaw. A rib was beginning to press against the ground in a way he very much didn’t like. He was skinny, but not skinny enough he should be able to feel the ground that well on a bone.
On the upside, it had stopped burning.
Hurting. It had stopped hurting. It was definitely still burning, because he could feel the skin puckering, tearing, then peeling away from the bone. He could only just barely turn his head to keep it from burning his jaw through.
He was clever, he knew that. Not clever like Aziraphale,
How can somebody as clever as you be so stupid?
but clever in ways that had kept him alive. At that moment, though, he couldn’t think of a way to escape. Turning into a snake made it worse. The ropes were too tight to dislocate or break his thumbs, and crawling without his hands would only burn him as slithering had. Maybe worse, even, as his corporation’s flesh was so much thinner than his scales.
Though it didn’t really matter, did it, when just laying there had him burning just as badly?
Not that he could do it anyway, considering he was impaled and pinned like a dead butterfly.
There had to be something he could do, didn’t there? Maybe—Maybe Aziraphale would find out, would come for him as Crowley had always come for him.
Once, he’d been caught by humans back during that witch-hunting craze. He’d been discorporated, and Aziraphale had found his corporation, snake-shaped, nailed to the side of a tree. It’d be a great way to break the tension when Aziraphale found him this way, right? Just like 1692, right angel? Except I’m human this time, he’d say.
Aziraphale was Supreme Archangel now, surely nothing in Heaven could happen without him knowing?
Though that would mean he’d known the moment they’d brought him up, wouldn’t it? And it had been plenty long enough for him to come if he’d known.
Maybe he did know and just didn’t care. Didn’t care about the demon who’d dogged his heels since he’d been an angel, and been pathetic enough to kiss him in some misguided attempt to make him stay.
Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t know, and wouldn’t ever know. Wouldn’t ever think of him again or wonder where he’d gone.
He fisted his hands, trying again for the rope. Tried to fist them, at least, because the consecrated ground had ravaged his shoulders where they pressed against it, burning away the muscles and nerves.
Crowley wasn’t sure what was so wrong with him that everyone got rid of him—
I didn’t really fall. I just… sauntered vaguely downwards
—or left him—
You idiot. We could have been… us
—but as the strength to keep his head up failed him, and holiness ate away at him, he hated himself a little more for it.
You know what you've done? You've disappointed me. Oh dear, oh dear. Everyone! Say goodbye to your friend. He just couldn't cut it.
Maybe he deserved this.