AN:
Hey, look! No crazy warnings for this chapter! Enjoy it while you can!

Shax stared at Crowley like he was a stinking pile that had gotten stuck to the bottom of her boot on a hot summer's day. Her eyes scanned the rest of him, then back up again, face flickering through a histrionic range of emotion before finally settling on bewildered disgust. "What are you wearing?"

Crowley glanced down at himself to see what, exactly, was so offensive. Nothing outside of the norm; his jacket was off, and tie loose, but he still wore his turtleneck and black jeans. His sunglasses were on the dash, but that wasn't usually a probl—

Ah. He was covered in glitter.

By some miracle—one he'd had no part in—he'd only been christened from the shoulders down, and—even more miraculously—hadn't noticed when he'd stepped out into the sun. Since it wasn't worth wasting any power over, he merely slung an arm across the back of the passenger seat and bared his teeth in something that might have resembled a smile when Shax shrunk back against the door.

"Normally that's a text opener, sweetheart." Crowley didn't give Shax's confusion time to settle before he loomed closer. The effect might have been a little undermined by the rainbow flakes that trickled off his sleeve and down the Bentley's black interior, but he couldn't tell for sure based on her already-horrified expression. "Never mind. Tell me what you want, so you can leave."

"The boss sent me—"

"Sorry, don't have one of those anymore. You can go anytime now." Crowley sank back into his seat and made an irate shooing motion.

"The boss sent me," she repeated, louder, "to tell you that you need to stop stirring up so much shit."

"I'm sorry, what?" For a brief moment, he almost wished he had his glasses on, solely so that he could take them off again in order to properly convey how truly dumbfounded he was.

Looking very much like she would rather be anywhere other than having this conversation—a sensation that Crowley could deeply relate to—Shax blew out an annoyed breath. "Whatever you've been doing up here is pulling attention from Upstairs down on all of us. We can barely get feet on the ground before another fucking angel shows up."

"That sounds like a you problem," Crowley countered.

Really, that sounded like an Aziraphale problem, the fucking overachiever. All it had taken to rip him away from them was a half-promise of power—the ability to do some Good, or fix something, and he'd jumped without even considering what the other half could be. Then Shax—Shax, of all the blessed and the damned—had to be the one to deliver tangible proof that Aziraphale's policies were taking Heaven by storm. Apparently.

The little bastard must be positively giddy.

Crowley wasn't going to get anywhere with thoughts like that. He shoved the key in the ignition.

Shax, in a bold moment of either daring or stupidity, darted her hand out to clamp it above his where it was clenching the wheel in a white-knuckled grip. "No, Crowley, this is a you problem. You need to stop."

"Or what," he snarled back.

"Or they'll send someone to discorporate you, you bleeding imbecile!" Cold terror washed over Crowley's spine, and he couldn't even be angry when Shax eased away, her nod uncomfortably knowing. "You don't have any friends Down There. Once you're back, you're back for good."

No, there wouldn't be a fresh corporation for Hell's Traitor, would there?

There would be an eternity. Locked with Them.

No allies.

No mercy.

No way out.

Crowley shuddered.

"Why, exactly, are you bringing me this little warning then? If everyone hates me so much?" His voice, somehow, was steady, but the tremor in his fists gave him away.

"Told you. Boss's orders." Shax looked away, out the window. In the reflection, Crowley saw a muscle in her jaw twitch..

Shax was a demon. Demons lied.

But did she now?

He tapped his fingers against the wheel, studying her for what was probably a moment too long before he let out a gusty sigh. "Alright. Fine. Tell… whoever's in command now that I'll… tone it down." Crowley waited until she glanced back at him before he leaned over again. Glitter shimmered on the seat between them and Shax shifted back as if it were holy water. "Now. Get. Out. Of. My. Car."

"Careful, Crowley. Some of them are really looking forward to the day you slip."

Like he needed the reminder. "Get. Out!"

With a last, pitying glare, she was gone.

After so much time abroad, driving into London felt… different.

It shouldn't. It should feel like any other city—one with too many people and not enough space, a cacophony of voices and cars and music, the stink of humanity, and a cloud of smog forever on the horizon. He hadn't even meant to drive near England. He'd been in Toulouse, angling toward Nice, and then, all of a sudden, he was crossing the Channel and puttering sedately—well, as sedately as the Bentley ever managed—into the capitol.

Perhaps it was something about having resided there for so long, but there was an unplaceable, unmistakable shift as he crossed the city borders. A human, someone nostalgic, would call it a sense of coming home.

Without A— without him, Crowley didn't have such a thing.

He still had the flat he hadn't visited in well over eighteen months—that he was sure would be full of Shax's leftovers, all things dead and rotting—but it had never been home. Heaven, the only time it had been remotely livable was the night that he had stayed, terrified and jittery, uncharacteristically slouched on Crowley's couch while Crowley paced the kitchen in increasingly frantic circles. They'd barely touched, even then, even at their wit's end and facing destruction.

Azirapahle's soft hand in his had opened a great, yawning chasm of want—in that form, in that shop, had been the closest thing to grace he'd felt since the Fall. Crowley's desire, his need, had already been terrifying in its intensity, but to run those thick fingers over the texture of garments he'd imagined ruining in the most depraved of ways, the slide of Aziraphale's uncalloused hands against the wood of his desk, the spines of his books… Imagination had always been his greatest gift, and with that small taste he'd been able to augment his fantasies for years.

His inattention on the drive was certainly biting him in the arse now, it seemed, as the Bentley gently rolled to a stop on a street that made Crowley immediately stomp on the pedal.

Nothing.

"Listen to me, you little shit," he hissed, ducking down as if he could avoid detection in his very unmistakable car. "I am the driver here, which means you go where I tell you!"

The engine turned off.

"Unbelievable," he muttered, trying the key, then again for good measure. As expected, all he got in response was a disgruntled rattle. "And they call me the traitor." Crowley slammed the door behind him as he got out. "If you don't get your act together, I'm coming back with some turpentine and I'm going to have a conversation with your nice leather seats."

A few passersby glanced at him oddly, but since the traitor didn't seem the least bit repentant, Crowley not only didn't care, but actively scowled back. They started giving him a wider berth.

"You think on that," he growled and marched toward what was, allegedly, his intended destination. Last time I let my mind wander. That wanker has it in for me.

Give Me Coffee was almost exactly as he'd left it. The whole neighbourhood was quiet and still in the morning, only a few clumps of people readying themselves for a long workday. A neat stamp of power still radiated in the background, a familiar, blended signature that nearly made Crowley return to the car and threaten it within an inch of its metallic life.

However, he'd already caught Nina's attention as he opened the door, and while running was certainly an option—it's not like he hadn't done it before—he found himself letting it close slowly behind him.

She was exactly as nonplussed as she'd been five hundred and sixty-eight days ago, too, and Crowley idly wondered if perhaps someone had passed through recently and fucked with time. Not that he had expected many changes in a year and a half, but he didn't recognize a single thing out of place.

Nina leaned on the counter with both eyebrows raised in that way that made Crowley feel a bit like a recalcitrant child. He didn't enjoy it.

"Mr. Crowley. That was a lot of tomorrows. I was starting to think you were avoiding me." It was said lightly, but there was genuine hurt under the levity that made guilt bite at his insides.

Crowley pushed that down and away—he was a demon, for Someone's sake—and instead dragged himself up to the counter and braced a hip against it dramatically. "You're going to make me—ugh—talk, aren't you?"

"Oh, aren't you smart? And before your espresso even!" Nina's smile held too many teeth. "Why don't I trade you coffee for answers?"

"I think I'm getting the shite end of this," he groused, but waved a hand in a go-on motion anyway. "One question."

"Six. One per shot." Nina stood next to the machine with a battle-ready expression.

No way in Hell. "One."

"Four," she shot back, wiggling the hostage cup at him.

"Still one."

"Three, or you can bugger off."

Crowley had the distinct impression she'd wanted to tell him that since the moment she'd seen him through the window. Finally he locked his arms around his middle. "Fine."

That, she apparently hadn't been expecting, because she was quiet for a moment. Then, "I take it you spoke to Mr. Fell?"

"Yes." Excellent, he was still articulate through gritted teeth.

The shop was silent except for the sound of two shots hitting the mug. When Nina spoke again, it was gentler. "Where is he now?"

Of course they want to know where the angel is. He was their friend. You're nothing. One of the bad guys.

"Gone," he managed. His hands clenched in his jacket, unseen, before he forced himself to let go.

Nina looked over her shoulder in surprise. "What? Gone where?"

Crowley laughed, harsh and mean and a little wet. "Heaven only knows."

Obviously that hadn't been meant as Nina's last question, but, as they say, the devil's in the details—and Crowley had spent long enough being a devil lately not to take the unintentional out. He pushed away from the counter, ignored Nina calling after him, and barged out the door, which shut in his wake with an unsatisfying click.

Much like he hadn't intended to come to Soho at all, he didn't intend for his steps to lead him across the street, to the darkened door of A.Z. Fell and Co. Bile crawled up his throat as he stared at the storefront, at the regular hours posted, written in neat, looping handwriting. Crowley couldn't quite make out if the stock had changed from the window, and, out of habit, he grabbed the doorknob to fling it open.

The pain was nothing like he could remember. Crowley yanked his hand back, expecting to find his flesh blistered away. It was nothing of the sort, but the holy fire continued to burn in his very essence, a searing, jolting pain that made his eyes water and his knees weak. Whoever had redone Aziraphale's wards after his departure had rectified any exceptions.

For all his desire to never set foot in the place again, Crowley had just wanted to know that he could. That he could, and that he was choosing not to.

He snarled, demonic energy crackling dangerously under his skin. Eyes wide, chest heaving, Crowley tried to walk back the edge of his anger. The fury that rose, swift and vicious, clashed with the splinter embedded on a plane no one else could see, a distress of his true being that spiked so swiftly colours bled into one another in the Material and Crowley swayed on his feet.

Pounding, in his ears, in his head, in his chest. No, he was pounding, on the fucking front door of our shop with the hand not screaming with the power of an archangel's protection. According to the blessed sign, there was only nine more minutes before opening, and nine more minutes of this was twelve minutes too long.

His fist hammered on the glass again, weaker, but still insistent. There was movement inside, and he clung to the knowledge like a lifeline, braced against the door with head bowed and trying very, very hard to stay upright.

The voice of his saviour was high and bright, cheery in a way that had grated his nerves almost to dust. Now, the rush of very human blood through his very human form almost drowned out the words. "Oh, I'm not open yet, but you're welcome—"

Crowley raised his head. That was all the invitation he needed; the ethereal power holding him at bay disappeared, and he stumbled through the doorway, almost taking a nearby person to the floor with him. They scrambled out of the way just in time and Crowley sprawled, gracelessly, on that hideous rug that Aziraphale had promised to replace for the better part of six decades, and that his successor apparently didn't seem fit to do either.

His arm was screaming all the way to the shoulder, a little sliver of the divine creeping up and up and up, and it wouldn't be content until it consumed him completely. Crowley rolled onto his back with great difficulty, just so that, when he went, he could curse the shop and anyone in it.

A face popped into view, vividly red but features indiscernible given how his vision swam. It said something, probably meant to be comforting.

Fuck comfort.

Crowley was a demon; he knew pain. He'd known pain recently, even—five hundred and sixty-eight days of it—and if eighty years of active torture hadn't been enough to make him scream, then he wasn't going to over something as paltry as a few extra protection symbols. The agony was spreading, though, inch by inch—up into his jaw, down his throat, into his spine, into his wings. That made him choke and the rapidly-panicking figure over him go blurry and indistinct. He refused to give in to the cry bitten into the back of his throat.

Somewhere, something was making noises that might have been words, but Crowley could feel the synapses of his all-too-human brain slow in their firing, and he couldn't be bothered to interpret language when so much of his energy was being diverted to just being conscious.

He knew the person in the middle of the shop wasn't Aziraphale, would never be Aziraphale again, but— Maybe. Maybe they would tell him—

Crowley, robbed of any higher functions, managed to string together one last, well-practised statement, one that his lips knew how to form on their own, after strolling so often into this exact place after so many months apart.

"Hey, angel. Did you miss me?"