Chapter Text
When he finally came back, he was different.
They both were:
Crowley didn't want to be anywhere near him, but would have broken apart the moment he went away again.
And Aziraphale wore a waistcoat that was too stiff and not at all like velvet and comfort; and he wore a voice that had lost some of its anxious undertones and sounded nothing like his usual melody.
For better or for worse, whatever happened that changed him so fundamentally - it made Crowley wonder. And mourn. And hold his breath.
He wanted to curse him, hate, berate him. Wanted to run away from him, and to stop loving him so desperately despite the hurt.
For every step the angel took towards him, he demon took two steps back.
He shouldn't be here, in his garden.
In the home he built for himself at the edge of the world, when nothing of his world made sense anymore and he had to bring himself back from the edge.
He shouldn't be here, in his garden, how dare he-
Step on the grass Crowley allowed to grow freely and crush the white and yellow flowers underheel those ugly, heavenly shoes. Merciless, ugly, Heaven shoes.
How very dare he? To just-- barge back into his life like he belonged still, like he never left.
Like this was some old bookshop up to the ceiling in old dusty books and warm light, like a home. Like a home shared and loved, a home he hadn't abandoned.
How dare he arrive unannounced and invade his life like he belonged in it still-- even if Crowley had been idly entertaining the different scenarios of his reappearance, over and over and over. Left it simmering in the back burner of his mind, every day, for eighty years.
(And not in a voluntary fashion - it was much less 'like a child playing with the flame of a candle with hands made of paper', and much more 'like a madman tied to a chair howling in agony' sort of way. A very special kind of torture he'd get commendations for, were it not inflicted upon himself.)
He was here, finally here, and all Crowley wanted to do was yell and tell him to piss off.
(Wanted to fall to his knees and beg to be held and loved.
For his pieces to be stitched together again;
for his faith in his oldest love to be restored and rekindled.)
His heart ached and his mind screamed, and he was trapped somewhere in the mayhem. Trampled by his own thoughts and choking in a deluge of brackish, murky feelings pulling him undertow.
His hands were balled into fists and his bare eyes burned of wildfire and betrayal. They tore holes through Aziraphale, unleashed and unmoored.
He looked menacing and dangerous, made entirely of exposed wires electrified by enough pain to power London for a whole fucking year.
(And also by horror, and fear, and deafening despair.)
This- it wasn't a whisper; there was no air in his lungs.
There was no sound in his parched throat.
This was a jumble of mouthed words, but he might've screamed from the rooftops and it wouldn't have made a difference.
"Go. Away. Don't come back."
(And perhaps, what he really meant, in the deepest and most despised corners of him, hid under the fingernails cutting white half-moons in his sweaty, shaky palms.)
Aziraphale's eyes never left his, and there was something deeply unsettling in the way they stared back.
They didn't flicker elsewhere.
They weren't sharp, but not soft either.
They were the eyes of someone going into battle unafraid.
Unflinching.
Unrecognizable.
"I will leave if that's what you want."
His voice was wrong in Crowley's ears, everything about him was entirely wrong and not his Aziraphale at all.
To be fair - His Aziraphale had long died. And in a flowerbed, among cornflowers and forget-me-nots the color of his eyes by the sea, Crowley buried him in a shallow grave.
A grave so shallow he was forced to look at him at all times.
Step around his body on his way in, and on his way out. Lie next to his corpse to sleep, and live his life like he, too, had died.
Stare at him at all times he must! The putrified image of Aziraphale touching his lips in horror, the stench of a thousand dead birds.
Step around it, ignore the infectious wound burst open gathering flies in the stupid beating heart he still dragged along like shackles at his feet.
Oh no, this was not his Aziraphale at all.
His voice was wrong and devoid of the fleeting decisionlessness he always loathed for being unbearingly charming and he was fond.
It was rough with certainty, heavy with decision, its pockets full of stones to be thrown at him to hurt and hurt and hurt for another eternity.
(But he would still bear them, he knew - as many stonings as it would take, if it would make Crowley love him any less.)
"It is. 's what I want," he mouthed and it would have been impossible to tell it apart from a grunt, were this not the being who knew him best. He was well-versed enough in his jumbles of consonants and strange syllables to derive meaning. (Even if not particularly fluent in reading between the lines, clearly)
His entire body spoke: taut with fear and anger, his face wrung and impassive. His pulse hammering in his skull and inside his gums -
bury this too, in a shallow grave.
Hold that shovel and smash it until all blood splatters out and away from this stupid, useless heart.
Kill it as many times as it will take, but do it properly this time.
Bury it under those stones you brought in your pockets and bury me along, lest I'll still long for you a thousand years more.
"However," two octaves lower lower lower than it should be, wrong wrong wrong.
"I will tell you this.
"I always have.
"I loved you so deeply.
For the longest time."
How loathesome! How pathetic, to fall apart so easily, at the faintest display of affection.
Don't fall for it, you absolute dimwit - it's a trap. It's always been a trap, you pathetic excuse of a demon.
Offer him a sliver of hope (the purest of poisons), and watch him devour it whole!
Watch him swallow it whole without tasting it-- the hellfire that will burn him from the inside, turn him into a charred shell.
A lifetime trapped within a crisp dead body with a cockroach for a heart.
How loathesome, and how pathetic, to fall apart so easily, at the words he waited the creation of worlds to hear.
Washed clean of guilt and hung on a wire mid-air to dry in the sun.
"No," he mouthed, but his cheeks were already wet and his breath was ragged. His knees wobbled as if he'd been standing here for eighty years waiting-
Because he had.
"I should have said this a long time ago.
"I should have put you first."
Crowley's wrists pressed against his eyes with force and he yelled and breathed like a man underwater,
"Stop talking! Just shut up! Stop talking!"
And he shouldn't have been able to hear Aziraphale's calm breathing so close.
He shouldn't have been able to feel the warm air of it on the back of his hands.
Why the fuck was he so close?
"And now I can. Because I also believe, deep down, despite our struggles,"
"Let go of me! Don't touch me!"
"Despite all this mess- which, I promise, I will make right; I also believe,"
"No. I don't-"
"That you love me too."
How pathetic, how loathesome...
To fall apart the very moment he gathers the pieces of him in his arms, holding him up and together and so tight against him.
To cry this openly, this ugly, tears heavy like the first flood and thick like the first rain - blessed and scathing rain above pristine wings, in a time they were so innocent... When he thought he knew pain but had no idea, no depth of what heartbreak would feel like.
(Should've run then, but now it was too late.)
It was too late and he was drowning, and he was burning.
His entire being was alight and burned with a hope he didn't want, never wanted, but it consumed him and melted his flesh and all he wanted was to be broken open and trust his words. Break him open and thrust it into him, pour it filthy onto him until it's made new, this filthy desperate trust.
To trust his words, to allow them to heal his sore muscles and every tiny bit of him that shattered, so fantastically!, he was sure humans would still unearth mysterious bits of stones scattered across the globe a hundred years from now and marvel at how they still bled.
"You fucking bastard," the feeble string of sounds that left him had no right sounding this fragile, "you walked away and I was- I was-"
He paused to breathe in gulps, air thick as cotton to swallow.
He reached around the dark in his mind - tore down the wallpapers, scattered papers off drawers and ripped the light switch off the walls - no bloody perfect words anywhere to be found.
His chest heaved with the (unnecessary, human) effort of keeping him alive and it just...
The word slipped under the doors and past his lips in a pale sob, like decay-
"bereft.
Is what I was."
The long drag of silence felt like days.
"I know," the angel admitted at last, and it was the first time his voice wavered.
Crowley would give up eventually, he knew.
And he would lie lifelessly in the desert and pray for rain.
Like wishing for things that would never come to be, time that would never be spooled back.
Broken things that could never be mended and promises that should never be made.
In the unmeasurable silence, a confession.
"It's not like I can't be without you. I can, and I have, just--
Never wanted to.
And I.
I. honestly don't know how to trust you anymore, Angel.
Don't think I can."
"I see."
"And worst is-- you'll keep doing it.
And that's the core of it, isn't it?
"The moment those assholes so much as look your way, off you'll go!
Over and over and over, and and and-
what's left again? over and over?
Me.
There's that pathetic demon Crowley, following a fucking angel around like he's worth half a thought in his pretty little head.
Barely an afterthought, if anything."
Aziraphale fell silent, and so did Crowley.
The air was so still the quiet could be mistaken for peace, and it was anything but.
There were many things yet to be said, but there was also too much shame and grief to wade through.
Still the world seemed to slow down, no longer powered by Crowley's rage.
Slowly, his hiccups quieted and the fight in him ebbed.
Slowly, he was able to balance the weight of himself on his legs once again.
His hands stopped shaking and the searing pain is his chest numbed to electrostatic. A zombie-like state; a parasite taking control.
Braced his hands against Aziraphale's chest and tried to shove him. Push him away for good.
And it was too late, he was too tired, already too...
too threadbare.
Worn down, broken open and emptied. Infected and alone.
As always and always and always.
It was too late- a pair of chilly hands locked in the nape of his neck, firm. Impossibly gentle.
"Next time I go there, I'll drag you along."
And before Crowley could scream the blinding anger pushing him over the edge to madness, Aziraphale held him tight enough to break human bones.
Then whispered something in his ear, that one could only infer was either wicked or merciless.
Or both, for it made him arch his back and groan.
And the world was lit on fire and he burned away.
In the shell of his ear, Aziraphale's breath singed him. His voice rumbled through him in waves, and the warm gusts of air punched through his nerves.
"Next time I go there, I'll drag you along," he repeated calmly as Crowley dug his nails painfully on the angel's back.
"To burn it all down."