AN:
Hey friends! I have a short update this time, in the interest of keeping all the triggery parts to themselves. So, another chapter should be up shortly, but it'll be more Not Fun things Crowley has decided to indulge in.

Voices.

"I'm here, what's the emergen— Oh my God!"

Thud. Rattle. Click.

"I would like some quiet, if you please."

A bell. Footsteps. Gasping.

"What the actual fuck?"

"I don't know! You called me!"

"He was fine two minutes ago! And he didn't have bloody wings then!"

"Some quiet, please!"

Tinkling, usually pleasant, turned strangely ominous.

"Oh, sodding— No, mate. Sorry, closed. Family thing, you know how it is."

More words, trailing off into murmurs.

Footsteps again, closer.

"So what happened, exactly?"

"I saw him come over here and then—"

"Please!"

"Right, yeah. Talk later."

Speech, low, intermingled, collaborating. A weaving, into and around one another, into and around a backdrop of sound that rose and fell like the tide.

And light.

So much light.

Brilliant, sparkling white, hints of the Everlasting shimmering at its edges. A fluttering, throbbing pulse in the space where Grace should have been. It was debilitating in its compassion, the all-encompassing ubiety of Love pressing apart the very pieces that construct a consciousness, a soul. The shattered fragments were swept aside, pushed through and between the very atoms of their vessel, clearing that much more room for the dichotomy of the Divine.

Ivory. Alabaster. Eggshell. Pearl. Chalk. Wax. Snow.

Ebony. Obsidian. Pitch. Charcoal. Ink. Onyx. Jet.

The White was blinding, any Black relegated to the outskirts of Being. But this Presence was neither of those things, not completely. The Black throbbed against the White, a protest and a plea.

A desire.

A joining.

Silver. Ash. Slate. Smoke. Heather. Dusk.

Complete only in shades of grey.

"Get him away from here!"

Hands, under his arms, around his knees. A struggling, uncoordinated lift.

"Heavy, for such a skinny bloke." The winded grunt was right against his ear.

"Where away from here?"

"As far as you can."

"Tall order, that." The hands on his legs adjusted their grip.

"Shit, the door."

"Alright, here. You go through first. Back out— yeah, like that, and I'll follow."

The arms locked across his torso jerked him up where he'd started to slip.

Eyes, each a white-hot blaze the exact colour of Procyon* rising in the winter sky, followed their every motion. The twin points hurt to look at directly, yet were simultaneously only bright enough to illuminate the golden flecks on white feathers, collecting like dewdrops in a glossy, prismatic lustre.

Then he was outside, the heat and stench and clamour of humanity covering him in waves.

"Can we make it to the car?"

"Maybe. I need a second, though."

A release of power—lightning striking wood, rivers swelling in a deluge, a peal of thunder that held no sound.

"Muriel!"

Sinking, falling. A controlled dive.

Fingers bit into his shoulder. "Stay right here, Mr. Crowley. We'll be right back."

Another blast of energy, ethereal.

Crashing.

Swaying.

Nothing.

"Oi mate, you alright?"

He must have been already flickering on the edge of consciousness because instead of groaning his way back to coherence, Crowley's immediate reaction was Why do people keep asking me that?

Well. Today's why was a bit obvious.

Not that the speaker could have known that he'd just barely survived discorporation, of course. Crowley covertly flexed his hand, hissing as the muscles screamed from fingertips to shoulder. Even aided by a bit of supernatural healing, it would be a few more days before the worst was scabbed over; his injuries on the metaphysical plane were grievous enough to manifest, raw-skinned and blistered, here in the Material. At some point during his flirtation with unconsciousness, the wound had been inexpertly tended to, his hand slathered in ointment and wrapped in gauze that was already coming loose.

Worse than the trauma to his true form was the knowledge that someone Upstairs was intimately familiar with Aziraphale's wards, and had packed the destructive power of an archangel into the runes protecting Heaven's embassy.

The implication made him ill.

Crowley slowly opened his eyes, expecting the late morning sun to lance through even his darkened lenses and leave him insensible. The shock of his surroundings quickly turned sour in his stomach; a sky darkened to dusky evening, the bustling commotion of midday nothing more than a low hum. How long had he been here? In plain view, unprotected. Vulnerable. Did he really mean so little?

Of course they don't care about you. You're nothing.

Something was off. Something was wrong. It was tangled up in his infernal senses, making him dizzy.

Crowley snarled. He couldn't remember anything past touching the door to the only home he'd ever known and feeling like he was about to be cast down into Hell a second time. But it was so hard to focus when his entire body ached, as if all of the fluid had been pulled from it, turned into alcohol, imbibed, and the resulting hangover dismissed with a flick of someone else's fingers. Even his wings hurt, like they'd been shoved into a dimension that was a size too small. Whatever the fuck Upstairs had done, he didn't much care for it.

From the corner of his eye, Crowley saw a man—broad-faced, broad-shouldered, with blond hair gelled into spikes and the most concerned brown eyes—crouch down beside him.

Right. The Good Samaritan was waiting for an answer.

"Ngh. Never better." His voice was rough, with an almost smoke-like sting in the back of his throat."Was just waiting for—" Crowley swallowed and forced the rest of the sentence through his teeth. "For the owner to get back. Must've dozed off."

The stranger snorted. "You could be here 'til next week in that case. This place is open the weirdest times, and I've helped Cambridge professors with their office hours."

That wasn't right, somehow, but Heaven if he could put a finger on why. He didn't know if he could manage to think about it. In his long, long existence, Crowley had only ever had one place where he'd felt truly at ease, and he had just thoroughly been disabused of the notion he was welcome anywhere on this planet, that he had anyone left to call on.

He wasn't going to cry over it—demons didn't cry—but his eyes watered as he dug bloody crescents into his uninjured palm.

Because that was the rub, wasn't it? After everything, he'd been dumped unceremoniously on the bookshop's front step, left propped against a pillar with a rudimentary patch job and a hole in his memory.

Fuck. He had to get out of there.

Crowley levered himself to his feet with only the slightest stumble. After being crunched into the opposite of his usual sprawl for Satan knew how long, he was honestly surprised his legs remembered how to hold him.

Now that he was upright, the wrongness was pulling at his middle, a beseeching insistence that hooked itself behind his ribs and tugged. Come, it beckoned, an undertow of power that nearly made him stagger. Crowley locked his knees against the riptide, breathing in deep through his nose and letting the air out on a hiss. He wasn't coming near this neighbourhood again, let alone this fucking street. Not if he could help it. And succumbing to a compulsion?

Absolutely not.

He took one small, wavering step, and swallowed a curse as the concrete was suddenly pulled out from under him. Before he could pitch over, the man stood in a swift, fluid motion, arm outstretched. He was tall, almost as tall as Crowley himself, and solidly built enough to have supported more weight than that of one lanky demon. Up close, there were hints of green in his hair from a recent dye, and Crowley felt himself lean into the woodsy scent of his cologne.

Only for a moment, though, before his ears burned. Was he really so helpless that a human had to catch him like a fainting Victorian maiden?

Shoving away from the wall of muscle, he scowled. "Told you, I'm fine."

"I think we have different definitions of the word 'fine,' but alright. As you say." The stranger threaded his thumbs through his belt loops and shifted pointedly out of Crowley's space.

He jerked his head in response and strode more confidently across the street to his girl. Golden eyes flicked to where Give Me Coffee had gone dark, closed up early for the evening. On the opposite side of the street, Maggie's records were blanketed in shadow, and not a single reading light had been left on in the building next door. Gone, the lot of them. They'd tossed him to the curb without a backward glance and disappeared into the night. Together.

Crowley's chest constricted. It was one thing to know and quite another to know.

The Good Samaritan was still watching, hands hanging loosely from his belt. Another person who would just walk away, if Crowley let him.

"Oi! Cambridge!" The man cocked his head, eyebrows raised. Half in the Bentley, Crowley patted his girl on the roof. "Can I give you a lift?"

* More facts about my favorite star!
/procyon/