Kyinas was ambitious, but that sort of thing was expected of a demon. And he wasn't unusual in that he acted on that ambition, but only that his schemes tended to accomplish exactly the results he wanted. He was clever and worked with a slow patience that spoke of competence, and he tended to be a decent sort of fellow right up until the moment you got in his way.

Right now, he was sitting in a tavern beside Crowley, smiling with slightly too many teeth.

Crowley blinked at him. "You mean, you want to get his attention?" he said. "An angel?" When Kyinas nodded, he said, "Why?"

"Let that be my concern," said Kyinas. "I'm only asking information, small things you may have forgotten in your reports, or thought too banal."

"Right," said Crowley, who had been embellishing his reports for centuries now. He wondered if, when Kyinas found the angel easier to deal with than Crowley had implied in his epic tales of adventure and daring-do in the service of evil, it would be better to be considered a liar or an incompetent. He stared morosely into his mug.

Kyinas also stared meaningfully at Crowley's drink, and Crowley winced a little as he remembered he was currently supposed to be finalizing a deal with a prominent family in the next town. But Kyinas didn't mention it; he just manifested a mug identical to Crowley's own. When he looked back up at Crowley, his grin said, We're just two working stiffs, putting one over on the boys in charge, but it also said, One day I'm going to be in charge. And I'll remember.

"He doesn't much like it when anything untoward happens to children. Babies," Crowley said. "'Specially on purpose."

Kyinas nodded at this, but he looked somewhat unimpressed. He motioned for Crowley to continue.

"And, um. Writings."

"Writings?" Kyinas repeated.

"You know. Scrolls, tablets. Squiggles." Crowley took a swallow of wine. "Every time some collection gets destroyed by angry fires or rampant barbarians, he takes it personal like." Crowley grimaced in recollection. (It wasn't that he hadn't expected Aziraphale to be upset when one of Aziraphale's favoured humans broke a stone tablet over the head of another, it was just that he'd thought the angel'd be pissy about the shattered skull.)

Kyinas was silent for a minute, thinking, and then the smile was back in place. He clasped Crowley on the shoulder as he got up. "Much appreciated, old friend."

Crowley watched as Kyinas walked away. When the other demon was about to leave the tavern, he called, "Kyinas, wait."

Kyinas turned back. He was standing in front of the open doorway, backlit so that nothing of him was visible except blue eyes and impossibly white teeth.

"Er," Crowley said. "Listen, are you sure you want to do this? Az- er. An angel's a powerful enemy."

"I've hopes of that," Kyinas said. He flashed Crowley a too-wide grin, and stepped out into the afternoon.

Crowley returned his attention to his drink. The cheap wine was gone, replaced by a sweet smelling liquid. When he finally raised it to his lips, it was excellent.

He didn't enjoy it at all.

--

Crowley felt the explosion before anyone else heard it, because occult disturbances travel more quickly than air waves. They travel more strongly as well, and Crowley was the only one in the marketplace who was knocked to the ground. He jumped to his feet and made for the main road, pushing aside a few humans who also wanted to see what had happened.

There was smoke drifting from a large building near the centre of the city, which shadowed the fallout from the deeper level explosion pretty well. Crowley knew that Kyinas had had some business in the area of late, but a momentary check told that the other demon was currently gone from the Earthly plane. Crowley fell into step with a wave of people hurrying towards the fire, and then broke off a couple buildings away. He stood to the side, watching the resultant confusion and trying not to be distracted by a visceral pleasure in the panicked mobs. There were a few women pointing and shrieking at the ruined house – Crowley thought he caught a cry of 'Husband' over the general noise – but it was obvious there was little hope for anyone trapped inside. Sheets of flame erupted from every window and licked along the outside walls. It was the same orange of any fire, but when a man ran up to it and tossed a bucket of water in an attempt to be heroic, his skin blistered with the heat and the water turned solid before reaching the flames and fell to the ground as ice.

There was a cracking noise, and the mob backed off in case the building was about to fall, but the only thing that moved was the fire. It drew in from the windows and then, after a moment of silence, burst through the main entrance like two giant orange wings. Some of the nearby crowd screamed and fell to the ground as they were hit with door shrapnel, but it was hard to distinguish them from those of the crowd who were just screaming and falling to the ground on general principles.

A figure stepped out through the broken doorway, and Crowley recognized Aziraphale before he could properly see the angel. Aziraphale walked slowly between the walls of fire, limping slightly. He had his wings out, heedless of the mass of people around, and when some of them tried to move closer the flames gathered and swept them away. Aziraphale ignored their panic, and took a slow glance over the area. His gaze met Crowley's.

And then he was right there, wrapping a hand around Crowley's throat. Crowley might have twisted away, but he lost half a second to shock at how dishevelled the angel looked. There was a cut under his eye, seeping red, and there was a mess of blood on his wing where a handful of feathers had been torn out. Deep burns circled his forearms, visible even on his human body, and Crowley could smell traces of the dark magic of binding as Aziraphale pushed him into the nearest wall.

"You," Aziraphale said.

Crowley tried to make a reply, probably a lamentation on the fact that his voice box was being crushed, but it came out as a strangled cough. He stopped trying to pull Aziraphale's hand away and swiped at him instead. Aziraphale caught his arm by the wrist and slammed it into the wall beside Crowley's head. Crowley heard some of the bones break.

And then, while Crowley was shifting his balance in preparation for a kick, Aziraphale pulled him from the wall and started dragging him towards the centre of the street. Crowley lost his footing and fell hard, and when he tried to trip up Aziraphale, the angel hit him in the stomach with his wing. Crowley had fought him before, but he couldn't remember Aziraphale ever being this focused.

Aziraphale cracked Crowley into the side of a fountain, and shoved his other hand into the water. Something fundamental in the liquid started to shift and change and align, and Crowley's eyes widened in panic. He cast his senses about for anything that could help him, and he suddenly realized that Kyinas wasn't just gone from the Earth, but gone.

"Beg for your existence, demon," said Aziraphale. "That's what your kind does, before the end."

There was too much holy water, too close, and Crowley choked on the moist air. "I had nothing to do with it," he said. "I swear to G- to anything! It wasn't me."

Aziraphale stared down at him, aloof except for something hard and shiny behind his eyes. "You must be getting better at lying," he said. "I could almost believe you think that."

Crowley tried to push against Aziraphale's grip, and Aziraphale slammed his head back into the fountain, dislodging a few drops of water. They began to wind down the stone, one of them slowly making its way towards Crowley.

Crowley watched as it slid down the uneven surface. The sunlight glinted from the water like it was a molten jewel, and the reflection hurt his eyes. He looked desperately to Aziraphale, blinking against the pain. "Please," Crowley whispered. "pleasssss." Aziraphale just looked at him, unmoved, and the holy water wound inexorably nearer, twisting to the beat of gravity.

It was too close now, a handsbreadth away. Crowley closed his eyes. He tried to steel himself for the holy fire that would come, and then after that, the eternal nothingness on the other side of existence. And he didn't even need to see as the drop fell ever closer, because he could hear as it ground against the smooth stone, could feel as the blessing reached towards him from a distance less than the width of a second, and now even closer as it…

Crowley was flung into the dirt. He quickly scrambled into a crouch and glanced about for Aziraphale, but the angel was gone. He looked to the fountain, and then couldn't stop staring at the tiny bit of water that was now crossing the spot where the middle of his head had been, until he began shaking so badly he fell over. There were a few humans watching him nervously from the edge of the square; Crowley met the gaze of one of them, and it scurried away.

And then, heedless of any audience, Crowley grabbed a handful of mud. It smelled of filth and was wet with a horse's urine, but Crowley didn't care. He rubbed it over his face and scratched at it, trying to wipe from his skin the lingering burn of holiness.

--

When they ran into each other a few centuries later, Aziraphale coughed politely and suggested something of an arrangement. Just letting each other know when anything big was going down, that sort of thing.

Crowley thought it best not to say no.