What About Angels?

by Phenobarbital

"Isn't it funny, that after everything we did to go against our respective sides, I ended up the official Supreme Archangel of Heaven, and you, the unofficial Grand Duke of Hell." Aziraphale said with a weak breathy huff of laughter. Crowley let those words sink in before he scoffed quietly, "No, I don't think it's funny at all..." *-Crowley tries to let go of his Angel.-* [slash]

1. We know full well there's just time

- Not beta read, all errors are mine, mine, mine.
- Sensitive readers tread lightly.
- Notes and images can be found on the AO3 upload.
- Title for the story and chapter titles taken from the song What About Angels by Birdy, that song and others mentioned in the story can be found on the Spotify playlist for this story, also available on AO3.

Enjoy?!

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PRESENT DAY, 2 MONTHS AFTER 'THAT MORNING IN THE BOOKSHOP'

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LONDON

---

It was a miserably sunny Wednesday morning at around 9 AM, that found Crowley bombing through London's busy traffic at well over any and every speed limit legally allowed in a densely populated city, the needle on the speedometer of his Bentley ticking rhythmically against the end of its range of movement, with the 110-mph mark on the dial a steady inch behind it.

Typically, when he was driving, music was blaring through his speakers. Clearly audible to him and perfectly attuned to his not altogether great mood, Queen's, The Show Must Go On was drowning out the rumbling sound of the Bentley's engine, his road rage growls and sneers and even the screeching of his tires as he swerved and maneuvered with expert carelessness through the traffic and pedestrians that he drove by in a blur.

It was like 'business' as usual really, something he did every day...except it bloody wasn't. Or it hadn't been, not in a little more than two months already, not since he'd finally worked up the nerve to confess to what was essentially the second instance of falling in his existence, to the being he'd fallen for...and then after being rejected, he'd stubbornly stayed away. Two whole months of that, of staying away, and now here he was, back to driving the roads that took him in the direction of Whickber Street.

He'd been on a very real 'bender', as the humans called it, since Aziraphale...well. Since that shitshow of a day in the bookshop.

The events following Aziraphale bailing heavenward, started with Crowley driving away from Whickber Street directly to his old flat, which he'd fully intended to reclaim since Shax had definitely buggered off back to Hell full time. He'd been right too, the flat had been empty when he'd stalked inside, striding through the front door and entrance hall confidently, into what had used to be his 'throne' room. He'd scrunched his nose up at the lingering scent of another demon having been in the place for so long, but aside from that, nothing much had changed and Shax hadn't left anything behind. They seemingly hadn't changed any of the fundamentals at all; the bedroom and kitchen were untouched, as well as the throne chair and desk, the TV, and most importantly, the *bar nook sideboard where he stashed his liquor, were all still there. So, it had barely taken any effort to snap his fingers and wave his hands a few times as he continued to walk through the rest of the flat, checking around, cleaning it up, opening several windows and restoring every little thing back to how it had been before when he'd lived there. Once he was satisfied with the restoration, he'd gone straight for his alcohol in the sideboard, unsurprised and very pleased to find his collection completely untouched.

Then he'd gone on to spend that day, and most of the days that followed, drinking himself to blackout drunkenness, not even making the barest attempt to sober up in between bouts, which meant it'd just been weeks of sleeping and drinking. It wasn't like it was inconvenient for him to stay drunk 24/7. Not being an actively working demon of Hell meant he had no work responsibilities, and not being human meant he had no physical concerns, and no Aziraphale meant he had nothing to give a shit about, so liquor it was.

And it'd worked fine, liquor was a great method of emotional sedation, in fact it'd worked so well he'd stayed calm, stayed numb, and he'd stayed away from that bookshop. Staying away seemed like a good idea to him, like he was taking a stand, because historically it had always been hard for him to stay away from Aziraphale after a serious 'fight'. In all the millennia, once they'd gotten to know each other well enough, whenever they'd had silly disagreements, it was Aziraphale who'd apologized. But whenever it was serious, whenever they'd had words that put them at odds, it had usually been his own fault, because he had a bad temper, or because he'd been the one being unreasonable or uncompromising, so he'd usually been the one who went to find Aziraphale, wanting to fix it. He'd find the angel and be the one to indirectly, and sometimes overtly, apologize to Aziraphale, sometimes even when he hadn't felt like he'd necessarily been totally in the wrong.

And that morning in the bookshop was an example of that.

Crowley knew he hadn't been wrong, not even a little, not a word of what he'd said about Heaven and Hell had been a lie or exaggerated, but Aziraphale had still left anyway. And because he knew himself so well, he'd known that if he didn't drink himself to a stupor, to the point that would have definitely killed a human being, he would have considered going back, probably wouldn't have been able to stop himself from doing so, from hoping, from going to see if there was any way...

So drinking had helped him to stay away. Although, subconsciously he'd remained fully aware of the painful fact that Aziraphale was gone, gone to Heaven, had chosen Heaven over him, just left him. Being drunk didn't make him forget anything about that morning, not the argument, not the pathetic attempt at kissing Aziraphale, and not how he'd stood and waited and watched as the angel left Earth. He'd needed to see it happen to believe it though, to feel that hurt, anger, desperation, regret and sadness, to properly feel it so he could grind it all down between his teeth and swallow it.

In that moment, he knew he'd appeared calm on the exterior, but he'd always had a good poker face, despite feeling thoroughly and achingly hollowed out on the inside from the loss of watching Aziraphale leave him. And it was not the same kind of hollowed out he'd felt after his first fall, when God had ripped out the angelic part of him and cast him down. No...no, it was actually...it was actually much worse. It was worse because Aziraphale meant more to him than both Hell and Heaven. Aziraphale had been all that meant anything to him for the longest time in his existence. So for Crowley, who was no good at processing 'emotions', perhaps it had something to do with being a demon, all of that hurt he felt, all of that loss, was a constant pain in the chest of his human body, and a blackhole at the core of his demonic make up, and that emptiness kept demanding he fall into it...

Like a personal Hell pit of suffering in his very own body and of his very own being.

And he had done, in a way. He'd spent days upon days drowning his various sorrows with copious amounts of hard alcohol, trying not to replay any of it in his mind; certainly not the way Aziraphale had looked at him, like he'd been living in a fantasy, like he needed to be pitied for thinking the bookshop mattered, for thinking the small part of the world they'd carved out for themselves mattered. And worse still, replaying that moment when he'd impulsively...when he'd decided to take his own advice, about a kiss...like a fool, like a twat-

His attention abruptly refocused to the present when he became aware of the song change,

"No, nononono, change it." he said loudly, both hands tensing on the steering wheel and teeth clenched as he glanced through his glasses at the lit-up car stereo, as if his car should know better than to play the song You're My Best Friend, by Queen with the current state of things. Immediately the song shifted to static before changing to play 'The Invisible Man' instead. With a grunt and his booted foot pressing even flatter on the already flat down accelerator, he willed the volume up impossibly louder as he swerved around another corner, ignoring honks from other cars while distractedly thinking that his Bentley needed to get caught up on reality, so that they could both start moving on from Aziraphale, the sooner the better.

---

Moving on from Aziraphale was the whole point of going to Whickber Street actually.

A few minutes later, with tires smoking, the Bentley screeched to an unnaturally abrupt halt in the usual place he always parked off; across the street from the bookshop. Also, conveniently for him, right outside the 'Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death' coffee shop.

Crowley didn't linger in his car, the process of switching off the engine, the too loud music cutting off as he swung open the door so he could step out onto the curb, all happening with smooth, precise and familiar movements. But the familiar routine of where he was going was different, because after he pushed the car door shut, the direction he took was not to go around the car and across the street to the bookshop. Nope, he was not going there ever again, that was the whole point of coming to Whickber Street. It was meant to be for one final time, to test himself, to test his resolve to move on, and he was off to a good start, because aside from casting a pointedly brief glance at the bookshop, he didn't hesitate to walk directly toward and into the coffee shop.

The shop was not busy, and Nina was easy to spot where she stood behind the counter with her cell phone in hand. She'd obviously already seen, and probably heard, him pull up outside, because when he pushed the door open and walked in, she was already looking at him, with something like surprise on her face. And he looked right back at her, except through his glasses she probably couldn't tell, which was likely why she confidently held eye contact right up until he was standing directly across the counter from her.

She put her phone down then and raised her eyebrows, saying,

"Long time, no see." and not even all that loudly, but since it was well after the morning rush, the shop was fairly quiet, so the few patrons sitting around all looked up and over at him, to see who she was talking about. She noticed it, and looked a bit annoyed by it, even as Crowley didn't even acknowledge anyone or anything around him. "Haven't seen you around," she continued a bit more quietly, "not since the Whickber Street Trader's and Shopkeepers Association annual meeting."

Crowley managed not to openly grimace too much at that mouthful of a title as he hiked up an eyebrow, asking,

"Were you expecting to?" in an offhand tone that he hoped she understood was rhetorical. He noted though, that his voice sounded lower and flatter than intended, likely from disuse the past two months. He hadn't been doing much talking lately, not even to himself when drunk like he'd used to, and so it seemed his human body's voice box was in a rusty state.

Nina shrugged one shoulder,

"Only in that way you expect to notice someone you never noticed before after you've actually properly met them," she paused, and when he said nothing, she added, "which means they become more noticeable, you know?" He just raised both eyebrows and shifted his head, not having a response for her, and after a beat she sighed shortly and asked, "Six shots of espresso, big cup?"

He made a bit of a face, because he actually didn't want to order anything, but he needed a passable reason to linger in the coffee shop, so he inclined his head in response and she immediately turned to start preparing it, saying, "Sit down then, I'll bring it to you."

Crowley wasn't sure how she knew he wanted a sit-down cup and not a takeaway, but she was right, so he did. Sit down, that is. He turned away from the counter, snakeskin boots sliding smoothly on the floor's surface as he looked around, and when he spotted an empty table not too close to, or too far from the counter, and with a nice clear view through the shop's windows, he sashayed his way over to it, pulling out one of the two chairs and dropping into it.

From where he was sitting he could see the bookshop quite well, and beginning his task of testing himself, that time he made himself look at it for longer. He could see that all the blinds were open but there was no movement inside, and he didn't want to think too much, but he couldn't help wondering if Muriel was actually selling Aziraphale's books. Then wondering whether Aziraphale had been back at all, even just to check up on his precious collection. Some of the books he owned were considered priceless to humans...

But no, no, he wouldn't have come back to check...because why would he care?

'Nothing lasts forever.' he'd said. Aziraphale had. Which, yes, right. Too right. Just like their...whatever they'd had together, it had lasted some 6000 years, and then that had been it. That would seem so long to a human, it'd seem like 'forever', because they were mortal. But to demons and angels it was nothing, it certainly wasn't eternity.

Crowley grimaced to himself, wanting to shake off those thoughts, and just then Nina arrived to set a big cup down in front of him. She caught his expression and followed his gaze, leading her to look out through the wall of windows at the bookshop, and when she turned back to look at him, she looked sympathetic. He inwardly cringed, turning his face to the side to grimace-sneer when she sat down across from him. She ignored his reaction completely, commenting,

"Haven't seen Mister Fell around either, since that morning." and Crowley said nothing, remaining in his sideways leaning position in the chair, staring out of the window at the bookshop. He was hoping she'd go away and let him face his pathetic attempt at 'closure' on his own. But humans were nothing if not persistent, "It wasn't our, I mean, it wasn't mine and Maggie's fault, was it?" Crowley frowned at that, "He didn't leave because of what we said to you about, you know, you talking to him, telling him how you fee-"

"Wha- no," he had to cut her off, glancing at her with his grimace still in place, "no, that's not, it's- s'nothing to do with any of," he raised a hand, gestured vaguely at her, "any of that." he finished, dropping his hand to grip the handle of the large cup but not actually lifting it, just squeezing it. Gripping it tightly and hating that the thought of; 'if I'd spoken first would it have made any difference at all' crossed his mind for the millionth time in two months.

Because it was a useless thought. He knew it wouldn't have changed anything, Aziraphale would never have chosen him, not when returning to be a Supreme Archangel in Heaven was the other choice. After all, what did he have to offer Aziraphale that would top literal Heaven? He wasn't sure why he'd ever thought he and the angel had been on the same page of importance to one another. Maybe he had actually been overestimating their relationship, because a demon was a demon was a demon in the end. And Aziraphale had seemed so elated at the prospect of him no longer being a demon. So being a demon was simply never going to be acceptable. And Crowley had no intention of ever being an angel again. Really, Aziraphale had obviously never been paying attention, hadn't been listening or understanding, when Crowley told him many times that the 'angel' side of him was long, long gon-

"So, where is he? Seems like he just up and left." Nina interrupted his train of thought, and he was quietly grateful, "Nothing in the bookshop seems different. I've been over there to ask about him, but there's only that girl there, Muriel, who despite being terrible at lying, somehow manages not to give any actual sensical answers or explanations." she explained, sounding a little miffed, then she stiffly asked, "Have you seen him recently?"

Crowley was picturing Muriel's wide eyed, naïve and gullible countenance just then, and he could have brushed Nina's questions off, but not really sure why, he deigned to answer the last one, albeit with a vaguely mumbled,

"No, and likely I won't ever again." and then he raised the cup, taking a gulp. When he lowered it again, he glanced over at Nina, who was now looking both sympathetic and concerned. Great.

"Did he jus- did he just leave you?" and, oh, how funny, she sounded angry. On his behalf? Well, that was certainly novel. And entirely unnecessary, but amusing all the same. He didn't smile though, had no desire to do so. He did choose to answer her again, continuing in a near mumble,

"He got a...job offer," she frowned at that answer, glancing out at the bookshop, "a dream job of sorts. Couldn't very well turn it down, he'd have to be crazy." and maybe he sounded a bit sarcastic, but he couldn't help it. He'd turned it down though, so technically he was calling himself crazy. But that was alright, he was better for it.

Nina looked ten kinds of confused though,

"He took a job offer- but, but why, he owns the building across the street." she gestured in the general direction of said building, "He was his own boss, he had tenants, why would he take a job?" she huffed, frowning as she shook her head and leaned back in the chair, crossing her arms over her chest. "Maggie gave up the music shop a few weeks back." she informed. That was new information.

Crowley followed her gaze to where the music shop had been. Now the glass windows were all papered up, the space vacant. Not even a sign up saying it was for rent. She could probably have stayed there without any problems. It's not like anyone would have come calling for rent. So,

"Why?" he asked as he turned his head to look at her, chin tipped up.

Nina looked at him like he should already know, plainly cross,

"She'd already felt uncomfortable staying on as a tenant who wasn't paying rent when Mr. Fell was her landlord. But after he left, Maggie's conscience couldn't take it. She went over to see Muriel, to tell her she was packing up and leaving, and Muriel just accepted it. Maggie even thanked her, although I still don't know for what." she was shaking her head again, looking annoyed.

Crowley lifted the cup, took another gulp from it and then looked out at the bookshop again,

"What did Muriel say?"

"I dunno', wasn't there, was I?" she said a bit shortly and then huffed again, "But Maggie said she'd been nice about it, and also a bit clueless, which I can totally believe."

"Hm, I can see that." he commented agreeably, the corner of his lip twitching, imagining Muriel not having a clue what Maggie was talking about but trying to be nice and seem aware of it anyway.

"It's not funny." Nina said, giving him a side look. Crowley just tipped his head from side to side. Funny was relative after all. "Leaving the way he did was pretty shitty." she sighed.

Crowley said nothing, even though he did agree with her. And he only agreed because he was hurting over being rejected. He didn't actually hold anything against Aziraphale, because it would be pointless to do so when he mostly understood Aziraphale choosing what he had. The part he didn't fully understand was why Aziraphale was okay with returning to Heaven to plan another Armageddon. That was actually something he'd been having trouble wrapping his head around since it happened. And he'd spent so many days and nights since, drunkenly wondering whether he should have told Aziraphale what he'd learned about Heaven's future plans, instead of blurting out his stupid, wasted confession...

...around and around they went, the same old thoughts and doubts and second guesses.

He inwardly sighed, deciding that the idea of getting closure by being there to look at the bookshop a final time was definitely a bust. He'd probably have more luck finding something to do to distract himself, besides drinking obviously.

In the silence that followed that thought, he became aware of the music playing in the coffee shop, and he found himself getting annoyed by the pop love song he could hear all too clearly. The thing about existing through time and liking music was that he knew far more of it than he actually cared for, and he tended to notice music in public places, modern popular music being the hardest to avoi-

"We're dating now though, so," Nina said out of nowhere, looking over at him. He turned his head to look at her and raised his eyebrows in question, "yeah, we are, so there's that at least, something good came out of all that...mess, for us."

Crowley stared at her sedately for a moment, then he frowned,

"Really? What happened to all that about," he raised his free hand and moved his fingers randomly in the air, making a weird voice to ask, "'I've just broken up with my partner, I'm not ready for a relationship, whatever, blah blah'?" while distractedly clenching his other fingers on the handle of the mug as the lyrics for the pop song 'She's so High' made him feel unreasonably bothered.

It was annoying him because he usually enjoyed music, and in the past it had been so easy to ignore the emotional reasons humans wrote love songs for, but ever since he'd admitted to himself that he was in love, now almost every song got to him in some way. It was incredibly frustrating.

"It's ironic to admit, but I actually changed my mind because of what you said that day." Nina answered, glancing around the quiet coffee shop before looking at him again, "What you said about how you and Mister Upandisappeared had been talking to each for 'thousands of years'," she made air quotes with her fingers, even as she looked askance at him, as if she wasn't sure whether he'd been talking nonsense or not, "it made me feel hyperaware of the fact that I'm not getting any younger." Crowley made an 'ah, I see' expression, agreeing quite a lot with the fact that human lives were extremely short, best not to waste time, "so I thought, fuck it," she huffed a laugh, "and I decided to ask her out."

"Hm, well done." he raised the cup in cheers and Nina half rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, looking happy and content and heart eyed and all those nice things that Crowley would never get to experience because Aziraphale had left him to go back to Heaven. Well, of course, maybe all that wouldn't have happened anyway, maybe Aziraphale would have rejected a physical relationship between them after all. Mind, he hadn't exactly responded when Crowley had kissed him, he'd kind of just let it happen, and then after, the angel hadn't looked happy. He felt like such a fool when he thought about it...and as if the universe was laughing at him, or perhaps God herself was, the song changed right then, into another pop song, one he recognized as Lovefool by the Cardigans and Crowley couldn't swallow down the growl he made as his irritation spiked.

Nina frowned at him when he growled and he looked at her sharply and then away again, asking,

"What's with the God-awf-, Sata-, ugh, the fucking awful music." letting out another low growl before finishing off the last sip of his espresso and setting the cup down loudly.

Nina, unfazed by his attitude for some reason, and probably for the best, just snorted,

"Oh, that. Maggie's taken over the music that plays in the shop." Crowley groaned, "Yep," Nina sounded fondly exasperated and she was still smiling as she started to get up since a customer walked into the shop, "so it's all been pop love songs these days. But I can't complain," she grabbed his empty cup, "it's what I get for dating a hopeless romantic." she said with some humor, and then she turned and walked away.

Crowley just continued to grimace as he watched her greet her customer, and then after another glance out at the bookshop, he decided he didn't want to stay any longer. No reason to really. He'd seen the bookshop like he'd wanted to, and he felt no desire to go over there, which was a good thing. He'd also had it confirmed that Aziraphale hadn't been around, so that was that. Now he had to leave and get on with it. With life. Or whatever.

He got up from his seat then, and walked over to the side of the counter so he could pay. He'd stopped a comfortable distance away from the customer, who Nina was focused on preparing coffee for, but Nina had noticed him there and she just continued right on talking,

"She really is a romantic though, Maggie, I mean," she was saying, "on our third date, she planned a whole candle lit dinner on the rooftop of her apartment building." she was shaking her head with a smile, "And she even timed it so that the song Kiss Me-uh," she glanced at him, "you know the one? The popular song that was in all the romantic movies of the early 2000s," he just made a noncommittal sound, and the customer glanced between them, "she timed it so that that song played right before we had our first kiss. It was so cheesy, but also quite smooth." Nina finished, glancing at him again, and then at the customer too, who looked a bit awkward. Crowley though, found himself just barely holding back another grimace, because he was completely uninterested in hearing or thinking about first kisses, well timed or ill-timed ones and definitely not successful ones.

But he knew Nina wasn't trying to be an arsehole in talking about her happiness and her first kiss with Maggie. After all, she had no way of knowing what had happened between him and Aziraphale. So, since he did know the song, and to be supportive because he was technically partially responsible for getting Nina and Maggie together, he managed a tight grin and said,

"One fabulous kiss and you're good." even as saying it caused a sharp pain behind the ribs of his human body. And maybe she noticed that he sounded off, because she looked at him with a slight frown, but he distracted her by raising his hand, in which he held a £10 note that he'd discreetly miracled up, proffered between two of his outstretched fingers, "Thanks for the coffee." he added, somewhat gruffly but mostly nonchalant.

Nina looked like she was going to say something, but as she turned to face him better, she stiffly paused. Crowley noticed it, it was obvious, as was the tension suddenly locked in her shoulders. It was also easy enough to guess why, since she'd frozen just when the sunshine from outside increased, as if some cloud cover had parted, and the brighter light reflecting around the shop was probably illuminating the space behind his glasses enough for her to see his eyes. His eyes,which he knew, had been brighter and more demonic than usual with all the stress he'd been under.

She blinked out of her surprise fairly quickly though, setting the customer's freshly prepared coffee down and managing to put the lid on it correctly on the second try, only because she was still glancing between what she was doing and his face. Then, with somewhat of a forced smile, Crowley watched as she slid the cup across the counter to the customer with a tense smile. And the customer had only just turned away when the clouds moved in again, so when she looked at him, whatever she'd seen before was no longer visible,

"Yes, uh, yeah," she started, blinking a few more times and placing her hands on the counter, "it was, fabulous, I mean." she nodded. She even managed to smile at him, despite her tone being noticeably off, just a touch nervous. Crowley actually thought she recovered quite well, all things considered. "Want another one for the road?" she offered a bit unsurely as she took the £10 note from him.

He just shook his head in answer with a small tight smirk on his face.

Nina responded with a stiff nod, bravely still trying to look into his eyes behind his glasses...right up until he turned away and started to leave.

He'd just reached the door, having grabbed the handle to open it, when she said,

"Uh, mister Crowley." and he was surprised, but not because she'd called after him, rather because he hadn't known she remembered his name. All the same, he turned to look at her, eyebrows raised, poised to pull the door open so he could leave. Nina smiled a bit sadly then, "I wanted to say that I'm sorry for whatever happened." oh, for Satan's sa-, "I'm sure you'll meet someone else." and wasn't that a laughable idea, so incredibly laughable it was depressing. But she'd never know it, "You know what they say; plenty of fish in the sea and all that." she smiled more genuinely then, and he barely managed not to sneer.

Having absolutely no response to such humany tripe, nothing at least that wouldn't just be rude, unpleasant or plainly incomprehensible to her, he just plastered on a close lipped, tight smile and turned away, pulling the door open and walking out. Before the door swung closed behind him though, he made a gesture that probably looked like a wave, but was actually just him flicking his fingers upward, making sure that for the rest of the day, the stereo in her coffee shop would play some decent music.

If Nina had any reaction to the abrupt change of music in the shop, Queen's, A Kind of Magic suddenly playing on her radio, Crowley didn't look back to check. He strode over to his car, seamlessly avoiding bumping into anyone on the way to getting into his Bentley. Once inside, he shut the door and jammed the key into the ignition to start up the car, A Kind of Magic continuing to blare from the Bentley speakers as he pulled away from the curb with a loud rev of his engine, and he very pointedly did not even so much as glance at the bookshop as he drove past it to enter the next street.

He put his foot down on the accelerator once he was around the next corner, speeding up without hesitation and letting everything around him outside of the car become mostly a blur as he ground his teeth together. He was driving for less than a minute when he sucked in a hiss of air through his teeth and grumbled out,

"Plenty of fish in the sea..." the repeated words followed immediately by the very depressing thought of how all the literal fish in the sea would have been fish stew long ago if he and Aziraphale hadn't stopped Armageddon together.

Him and Aziraphale. A demon and an angel. Total opposites. Hereditary enemies. Had Aziraphale ever stopped seeing them as such? No, no, probably not.

Truly, he was love's fool, because Aziraphale was both literally and figuratively so high above him; too good for the likes of a demon. Crowley continued to work his jaw as he drove dangerously through traffic, growling out low under the blare of Freddie Mercury's voice,

"I hate love songs."

---

8 WEEKS LATER

Crowley had very probably been in every pub in London a hundred times over for how long he'd lived there...and for how long he'd been alive in general. But for all that he tried, he couldn't remember the particular one he was in presently having a bloody jukebox before.

He hated Jukeboxes.

He'd never hated Jukeboxes before, mind. But after everything that had happened with Beelzebub and Gabriel and their infuriating demon/angel love story that had succeeded in a year where his own pathetic love story had only just been acknowledged after a few thousand years before he was rejected, he simply did not care for jukeboxes. To think...Beelzebub and Gabriel, falling in love all because of a few clandestine meetings in a fucking pub with a Jukebox playing some song which they'd decided was theirs. Even with memory loss Gabriel had remembered the damn song.

Such a human thing to do for two beings who knew nothing about bloody humans. Having a song together . A couple song . He and Aziraphale had a song. Kind of. At least, he thought of 'A Nightingale Sang' as their song...ugh. And even being in love! Such a human thing to do, but it turned out it was a thing which angels and demons could do too, with each other, except not so easily, or so he'd thought! But his old boss and that bastard Gabriel had made it seem so simple. They hadn't been concerned about consequences from Satan or God. They also hadn't cared about Earth getting destroyed, they'd just gone off, literally singing and smiling.

Made him feel sick...for the unfairness of it all.

It didn't help at all that there was a sappy love song currently playing loudly in the pub –yes, right, because the pub had a jukebox, and anyone could just choose the music they wanted. And humans still hanging around a pub at 10.25 PM on a weeknight were generally either there waiting to go clubbing, drunkenly hooking up or nursing their sorrows after some relationship problem, and somehow sad love music was just accepted as the go to for setting the mood. Crowley didn't know how a sad love song could be romantic, all he knew was that he could be considered as one of those there nursing his sorrows about a relationship problem, and the song really sucked for him as every obnoxiously too-close-to-home word of The Smith's, I Know It's Over reverberated around his head and made his chest ache. It all seemed so amplified too, with all the whiskey he'd imbibed. He took another generous sip from his glass for good measure. No point stopping now.

He was off to the side in the pub, alone in one of the booths, reclining back against the wall and sprawled over most of the seat, already a quarter way into his third bottle of whiskey. From where he sat, eyes concealed behind his glasses, Crowley watched a tipsy couple dance around slowly in pointless circles in the empty space between chairs and tables near the back of the bar, the pair ignored by the other few patrons still present. They'd probably been the ones to choose the depressing song. Maybe one of them was having an affair, maybe they both wer-

Crowley narrowed his eyes when his demonic senses were triggered by someone approaching him, someone who had... lustful intent. He slid his gaze to the side, to where he saw a young woman –one of the ones waiting to go clubbing no doubt- walking toward the booth he was in. Glancing behind her, he saw another female watching and grinning, like she was egging her friend on to come over to him.

He didn't look at the approaching woman again, knowing her intentions well enough just from the strong desire he sensed permeating her aura. And he was not interested. He hadn't been interested in tempting or corrupting humans sexually in almost a millennium. He also wasn't in the mood to tolerate her. So after glancing ahead of her, to where a woman and man were sitting at the bar talking, he raised his index finger as he brought his glass up to drink, throwing out a little miracle which caused the woman at the bar to stand up and turn around just when the one targeting him was about to pass. And since they both held drinks in their hands, when they collided their drinks spilled between and onto both of them.

That did it, the desire he'd been sensing quickly died down as the young woman and the other woman focused on each other instead. And Crowley hadn't expected it to be much more than a distraction, but he supposed that considering they'd both been drinking, it wasn't surprising that it seemed like it would escalate as they started arguing. It was a situation which would otherwise have been resolved with an apology, but with the man standing up and the friend coming over to get involved and other people taking notice, it started to turn into a shouting match quite quickly.

Crowley didn't care to stick around to see if they actually started fighting, with the mood he was in, it wouldn't even be amusing. So he opted to leave, sitting up and sliding out of the booth to stand on fairly steady legs, and only after grabbing his unfinished bottle of whiskey, did he walk right by the drama unfolding, heading in the direction of the exit.

A minute later he was slinking out of the pub into the cool night air, walking with a little more sway than usual as he made his way to where the Bentley was parked across the quiet street. Once there, he pulled the door open and got in, falling heavily into the seat before shutting the door, closing himself into the quiet space. He sat that way for a moment, holding the whiskey bottle by the neck balanced on his thigh and staring out through the windshield at nothing, mind liquidy unclear from all the alcohol he'd consumed, and yet some memories were still vibrantly and miserably vivid.

Especially that one memory. That one that he couldn't stop from replaying no matter how much he drank. The one of kis-...of kissing Aziraphale. It actually seemed harder to forget when he got drunk, and also harder to believe, that he'd really kissed Aziraphale. He really had. He'd thought of doing so before, certainly, many times, over the millennia they'd known one another. Honestly, he'd thought of more than just kissing. But kissing, a kiss, was where every thought, every fantasy he'd ever entertained, would begin. With a kiss. A fabulous kiss.

Aziraphale had definitely not thought that kiss was fabulous, and it hadn't been. Crowley knew that. It had been a desperate grab. The kiss had been hard, misaligned, ill-timed and dragged out in the cold heat of anger and panic. He'd known it sooner than he'd wanted to admit in that moment, that that kiss had been wasted. But he'd held on tightly anyway... hoping, wanting, inwardly begging Aziraphale to respond. To kiss back, even just the slightest amount. Aziraphale hadn't. Even when Crowley had pulled him more firmly into the kiss, hands shaking, the most that had happened was Aziraphale's hands skimming over his shoulders. The angel's lips hadn't even so much as puckered.

Crowley knew how kisses worked, and that kiss had been a failure, unrequited to the last second. He'd been rejected. His desperate confession of love, on an emotional and physical level, had been rejected.

And no matter how much alcohol he drank, he couldn't forget it.

Couldn't forget the pain, which meant he also couldn't enjoy remembering how it'd felt to press his lips to Aziraphale's...

"Ugggghhhhh." he groaned and dropped his head back, before reaching up and roughly pulling his glasses off, holding them between his fingers as he pressed the heel of his palm into one eye, muttering 'stopitstopitstopit' under his breath.

After a moment he dropped his hand and lowered his head forward, working his jaw a few times before he relaxed and sighed loudly. He felt so defeated. *Hundreds of millennia of existence, as an angel and then a demon, and only the last 6000 years really mattered to him, 6000 years in which he'd slowly realized he'd been developing feelings. Developing desires and ideas and needs and wants and in the last four years after the failure that was Armageddon, living in his fucking car, he'd even considered what domesticity might be like. What it would be like living in a flat or a house, or even in the bookshop...with Aziraphale.

And yeah, sure, maybe he would never have ended up confessing the romantic side of his feelings to Aziraphale if it hadn't been for Maggie and Nina sticking their noses in, and maybe he definitely, absolutely would not have wasted his first attempt at a fabulous kiss with Aziraphale on a panicked, desperate moment of trying to keep the angel with him, on trying to get him to realize and stay. But they could still have been happy as friends. As companions.

But even when he thought of it like that, he suspected the Metatron's offer would have still driven them apart, because Aziraphale was a Heaven-idealist, and Crowley had no intention of ever going back to being a fucking angel.

Clenching his jaw again, he dropped his glasses into his lap so he could unscrew the cap of the whiskey before taking a long drink. He swallowed tensely as he lowered the bottle and recapped it, thinking of all the times he'd wondered if demons and angels and Heaven and Hell were all pointless, but the joke of it all was probably that understanding anything in the universe was meant to be in-fucking-effable or something.

Crowley was shaking his head when the entrance door of the pub across the street swung open suddenly, and he watched two people being shoved out by the lone, large bouncer of the pub. He squinted at the scene, noticing that one of them was the woman he'd caused to spill her drink on the other. He blinked sedately as he watched the woman yell and swear at the bouncer who gesticulated rudely, telling them to piss off. He managed a scoff as he watched the small group stumble off along the pavement, away from the pub. It belatedly occurred to him that he'd technically done a good thing, or well, a good thing for a demon, which was a bad thing, which was good. Anyway, the point was, that once upon a time causing chaos and bar fights was a fun pass time for him. Then again, encouraging and facilitating the lustful poor decisions of humans looking for connection and closeness in the wrong places had been as well. He'd skipped that bad deed though, and he'd accidentally managed to do another. But no one was keeping count anymore, so who even cared.

He didn't care.

He didn't care about anything these days. He just drank...all the time.

You know what, maybe...maybe he'd sleep for a few years, or more than a few. Maybe he'd sleep for a decade, or a century and then whenever he woke up, maybe...

Shaking his head once abruptly, Crowley put the bottle flat on the seat beside him and put his glasses back on, before finding his car keys in his jacket pocket. He started the car a moment later, and when the music started up, he didn't even care what it was, he just clucked his tongue so the stereo instantly turned off, leaving only the rumble of the car engine filling the silence. After that Smith's song in the bar, he wasn't interested in listening to any more music for the night. Maybe the whole damn week.

He also wasn't interested in driving with his usual speed demon energy, so after putting the car into gear, with very normal pressure applied to the accelerator, Crowley pulled away from the curb and started the drive back to his flat.

---

Parking off in his usual spot Crowley got out of his car, whiskey bottle firmly in hand, and after swinging the door shut a bit too loudly, he teetered his way into his apartment building and then into the elevator, where he stood against one mirrored wall as it ascended, head leaned back and just breathing slowly, calmly, like humans did. When the elevator doors opened on the top floor, he pushed himself off the wall and walked out into the hallway. He was thinking about unscrewing the cap on his whiskey and chugging it, and maybe thereafter he'd just go inside and pass out. He was still undecided on whether or not he'd wake up anytime soon...

...but his half formed drunken plans were totally derailed when he turned the corner into the hallway where his front door was, only to be met with the sore sight of Shax, standing and waiting for him.

Shax saw him the moment he saw *them, and while they stood up straighter and turned to face him, his reaction was to pause and grimace, groaning loudly before continuing his approach with more weight behind each step, saying,

"No, no, no no no, whatever you're here for, it's a no." he was shaking his head, ignoring Shax completely when they said,

"Crowley."

"I'm not doing this, Shax, I'm not interested, not now- actually," he reached his door and stopped in front of the shorter demon, looking down at them closely, "never would be better. Jus' go to hell." they narrowed those dead blue eyes at him in response, and he just raised his free hand to nudge them aside, "I mean, literally, go back to hell." he said emphatically, then snapped his fingers up so the door unlocked and swung open. He did not have the hand-eye coordination right then to tackle using keys, and he did not have the patience to deal with Shax, "Come and see me in about six, hmmnn, maybe ten years-"

"Crowley." they said his name again in that clipped way they spoke, following him as he walked into the entrance hall. Hearing the front door close, he made a face Shax couldn't see and then he tried to compromise, hoping to at least get rid of them for the night,

"Or at least come back tomorrow morn-no, actually, afternoon, tomorrow afternoon. I've been working on a decent hangover all day. I'll be very busy with that in the morning." and he wasn't even lying. If he did decide not to sleep for a decade, he would face his hangover the 'normal' way, because he didn't miracle away hangovers anymore. The pain of it usually served as a good distraction from thinking about things.

He'd walked through the entrance hall and pushed the ajar frosted glass door open all the way to enter his throne room, where he turned and crossed the space to go to his *bar nook, pushing that door open as well and walking in before grabbing up a glass from the decanter tray. Shax's quick heeled steps followed him into that room, only coming to a halt when they said,

"It's no problem," sounding very close. Crowley did a quick half turn on the smooth soles of his boots to find Shax just there, two feet away from him, staring up at him. They appeared oddly amiable too, which was suspicio-, "where is your hangover?" they asked quite seriously, "I'll help you with it. And then we can discuss...matters."

Right...help him with- that was...well. He inwardly sighed.

Leaning his weight against the sideboard, he regarded Shax blandly as he considered whether it would be worth the effort of explaining what a hangover was...probably not though. And anyway, he decided it would be best to stop drinking, considering their comment about 'discussing matters', he assumed getting rid of Shax was not going to be too easy. They were there for some Hell related thing or other, and he was still a demon whether he liked it or not. Beelzebub turning up that time in his car had let him know he was only selectively excommunicated, because in the end as long as he was within reach, Hell would find him if they wanted, because Hell was still technically his 'lot' and he still technically answered to Lucifer.

Giving up, Crowley took in a superficial deep breath before he scrunched up his face and shook his head,

"No, no that's, it's fine, s'alright, actually. I'll just..." he glanced back at the counter top of the sideboard to set the whiskey bottle down and then after raising a finger at Shax, indicating that they should wait, he turned away and leaned on the surface, clenching his eyes shut and making a gruff humming sound for the few long seconds that it took him to purge the alcohol from his body and sober up.

When he was done, he grunted lowly, and he was swallowing the bad taste in his mouth and turning around again, right when Shax asked,

"What was that?" and he facially shrugged to brush the question off, but they seemed curious, "What did you do, I felt your demonic energy, but I don't know wha-"

"Shax." he bared his teeth on the tail end of their name, "S'nothing you need to worry about, forget it." and after leaning back against the sideboard he raised his eyebrows at them, "So, what is it? What matters do we need to discuss?" he asked, putting some annoyed emphasis into his words.

But instead of Shax making some confident official demand from Hell, like he'd been expecting, the other demon darted their cold eyes around, seeming kind of shifty.

"Things are developing. Quickly. In Hell." they said, quite unhelpfully. But their tone was somewhat conspiratorial, and Crowley found their behavior strange.

He tilted his head then, giving Shax a curious once over, taking in the sight and demeanor of the other demon. Shax was in one of their preferred Earth clothing choices; all dark red clothes, a long coat worn over a knee length dress, leather gloves, sharp low heels and a decorative fascinator to top it all off. Nothing odd about their clothes, but their demeanor seemed tense and a bit uncertain, which, if they were there for Hell's official business, wouldn't make sense.

Crowley tilted his head back and folded his arms across his chest, regarding Shax with his usual indifference when he prompted,

"Yes, alright, developing, sure," then he gestured with a hand for them to get on with it, "what things, exactly?"

"Well," they started, then paused and took another step closer, making Crowley frown, because there was no reason to stand so close, no one could hear-, "we've all, us demons I mean, and Satan our Master, we've been waiting for," another shifty look around, "you know," then a pointed look at him, " war." said very dramatically. "Armageddon, two point oh." she said quite seriously, sharply enunciating it. Crowley just nodded along, muttered an 'of course, yeah', "And we've finally gotten a new rumour about it through our...backchannels."

Backchannels? Oh, that again. When he'd heard from Aziraphale about Michael being the angel to bring holy water to Hell to destroy 'him' that time, he'd assumed Michael was probably the 'backchannel', and then later referred to by Beelzebub as the 'grapevine that obviously didn't exist'. Yeah, Michael was the one. They'd been the go between for passing messages from Heaven to Hell during the last Armageddon, then also during the whole Gabriel thing, and now likely again.

And Crowley couldn't help making an 'ugh, really' face at Armageddon stuff being the topic Shax had come around to discuss. He seriously didn't need, or care, to know any rumours about 'Armageddon 2.0' or 'The Second Coming' or whatever it was being labeled as, because not only had he watched the discussion about it firsthand during his little trip to Heaven not-really-under-arrest, but he also just didn't give a single fuck about it. He knew everything he needed to, i.e. Aziraphale left him for Heaven and all its bullshit. And he understood it all very clearly, far better than Aziraphale had when he'd gone off with the Metatron. And Aziraphale hadn't yet come back, but he'd definitely know about 'The Second Coming' by that point, and so he'd obviously decided to stick it out in Heaven and plan Earth's destruction. And fucking fantastic...right back to thinking about Aziraphal-

"...- to be ready." oh, Shax was still talking, "Crowley, are you listening?"

"Yes," he said automatically, "absolutely, keenly." expression serious, "You have my full attention." his tone somewhere between bland and sarcastic.

Shax blinked at him,

"You didn't hear anything I said, did you?"

Crowley couldn't help but smirk, Shax was finally catching on to sarcasm it seemed. Good for them.

"Why don't you just get to the part, where you tell me why you're here, Shax." he bypassed whatever he'd missed the other demon saying, hoping they wouldn't repeat themself. "I don't even know why you're telling me about this. Beelzebub has buggered off, Hell is majorly understaffed and mismanaged, and you know I can't be bothered with any of it, so-"

"Exactly, that's what I just said."

"Wot? R-really?" really?

"Yes, Beelzebub is gone, and Hell is understaffed, and I have been appointed Grand Duke of Hell, so I have to manage things, and it's not going very smoo- it's- what, why are you looking at me like that?"

'Like that' was amused and doubtful, because he couldn't believe the Dark Council, idiots though they were, and surely not Lucifer himself, would have elected Shax for that position. And if they had, then wow, things were really bad down there.

"Are you really?" he asked, unable to not sound like he was close to laughing, "Grand Duke of Hel- they really let you be The Grand Duke of Hell." he asked with all the amused, disbelief he felt. Beelzebub had been joking and sarcastic when they'd suggested that to Shax...hadn't they?

Shax looked miffed and still very shifty as they glanced to the side before looking back at him and spitting out,

"Acting."

"Wot'?"

"I'm the acting Grand Duke of Hell-," Crowley made an 'oh, now I see' face and Shax's expression soured slightly with annoyance, "I'm on a trial run presently, with the potential to be permanent. I've chosen Furfur as my assistant, to help me gain ground, since he owes me for a favor. I also promoted him to be an acting Duke of Hell, so he owes me another favour." they sounded pleased about that.

Crowley nearly made a 'pfft' sound at 'acting Duke of Hell', because that title was mostly just given away these days. It hadn't really meant much in the last two thousand or so years. He kept his amusement to a controlled grin though, and focused on what was more pressing, asking,

"Who's Furfur?" because the name didn't ring a bell.

Shax blinked, twitched their head to the side,

"He said he knew you well, that you went way back, to our angel days."

Crowley made a face, wondering why all the beings he knew so many millennia ago thought he'd remember them. Honestly, why would he?

"No, no, come on," he said exasperatedly, "why do-, I don't know who that is, and anyway, I still don't know what this has to do with me." he lied, uncrossing his arms and pushing away from the sideboard, walking out of the nook and idly off to the side. It was a lie because it was apparent to him now why Shax was there and what they wanted from him, and it made him feel antsy. He was a free agent these days, it would take Lucifer himself showing up to get Crowley to actually be worried enough to consider going back. Because if Lucifer showed up, his only other option would be to face permanent destruction. But honestly, since he'd royally mucked up the first Armageddon, Crowley felt like Lucifer probably didn't think he was even worth the trouble, because he'd left Beelzebub to deal with the whole mess even though he'd seen Crowley there at the airbase himself. So, chalked up to being a worthless demon, that's what Crowley had been hoping was the case. Out of sight, out of mind. But demons shouldn't hope, should they? It was a fool's game to do so.

Still, why him? Why call on him? Hell had options! Like,

"Dagon, what- what about Dagon?" he suggested as he turned around to face Shax.

Shax rolled their eyes sharply,

"You know full well, Dagon is a follower, not a leader."

Crowley opened his mouth to respond, but on second thought he just facially shrugged, because that was true. Dagon liked being close to leaders, but never actually pursued being in charge.

He tried another suggestion,

"Hast-ngk..." but cut himself off, because okay, Hastur wasn't much better than Dagon or Shax leader-wise, because he was also an idiot. A powerful idiot, sure, but power was not what got you a leadership spot in Hell, not since the very early days, back when the most powerful demons actually cared about being notoriously evil and whatnot. Now most of them couldn't be bothered. Still, there had to be some of them around. Crowley changed gears, thinking of some of the other powerful, but not stupid, demons he knew,

"Alright, why not find out what Cas is doing these days," he put on his sales announcer voice and Shax frowned at him, "Furcas? You know him, yeah? Hairy guy. The last I heard, he didn't seem to mind hanging around Hell. Or, you could even get Beleth in for a bit, they'd know how to whip some slacking demons into shape." Shax's eye twitched when he snapped his fingers and went on, "And I remember, uh, V-something, hm, vamp, vah, ah, Vapula, was it?" he wasn't sure, he just remembered running into that particular demon a few times over the millennia, "Smart one that, not much of a talker and no sense of humor, but..." he made a 'what can you do' face. He dropped the voice then, grimacing as he went on irritably, "You see my point though, right, there are options." he raised his arms to the sides, "I mean, even Andrealphus, or, or-"

"They're all useless." Shax cut him off, their voice an angry hiss and face all scrunched up, like they were taking something personally. Crowley made a defeated 'ugh' sound, frowning as Shax went on, "I've reached out to many of the more powerful demons who aren't already assigned tasks by Satan our Master," ...wait, already assigned tasks? "And they all say no or disregard me."

"Well, I mean," he shook his head, voice dismissive, "thas' just-"

"Just as you're trying to do now, Crowley." Shax narrowed their eyes at him and he closed his mouth, made a face, "Just as you did millennia ago. You all say no, or make up excuses," yep, they were definitely taking it personally, "avoid any hard work, happy to stay under the radar so you brush Hell off, brush me off. But some of you," he wasn't a fan of being a part of that collective, "threaten me, and worse, arses," they said emphatically, "like Bune, that arrogant fff- ugh, he just ignores me, even when I'm standing right in front of him!" they were showing their more demonic side then, baring their sharp serrated teeth in place of the human set.

Crowley just sagged his shoulders and feeling quite done, he walked over to his chair and sat down, leaning back and slouching low, legs spread, arms on the rests. He did not want this conversation to keep going, because he did not like the topic Shax was touching on with the collective 'you' business. He didn't like to talk about useless things from millennia ago. That had all happened not long after the original third of them who'd fallen had had to get their shit together. Back then, when Lucifer had wanted someone to step up, Beelzebub had been the one to take over as the highest management in Hell, because the rest of them hadn't wanted to take on that much responsibi-

"We all swore our fealty to Satan our Master," Crowley didn't even have the energy to roll his eyes at Shax being so obsessive about saying the title like that. And anyway, not actually, he had never said anything like that. To the present day, he'd only say a mumbled 'All hail, Satan' when he thought he couldn't get away with silenc-, "and we declared we would all actively participate in inflicting Hell upon Earth. And so it was, Satan our Master commanded us to go forth and spread evil, with Lord Beelzebub as our highest general." they hissed on, monologuing now apparently, while he just sat staring at the darkness of the city beyond the floor to ceiling windows. "But you all just buggered off elsewhere, eventually slacking off on your duties completely." He had no idea why Shax was telling him all this. He was honestly utterly indifferent to their complaining, he didn't care- "Now, with war nearly upon us once again, you're all wayward! And-"

"What actually happened to everyone?" he interrupted sedately, with a slight frown.

Shax was quiet for a beat and then they asked,

"How do you mean?" their heels clicking as they walked into view at the side of the large desk.

Crowley did little more than shift his eyes to look at the other demon from behind his glasses,

"At the last Armageddon thingy," he raised a hand to randomly gesture his fingers before dropping it again, "Lord Beelzebub said they had 10 million demons ready to go to war, where've they all gone?" and he sounded nonchalant, only mildly interested at best, but he was actually fishing. Shax bared their teeth again, hissing out,

"How in Hell should I know? Probably all slacking off." they snapped, seething from the personal affront they felt.

Crowley just raised his eyebrows and rested his head on the chair's back, mind starting to go over a few things that weren't adding up. Like Shax mentioning 'those who were already assigned tasks by Satan', and there was all that business recently about Hell being understaffed. And when Shax had raided the bookshop they'd come there with bottom of the barrel demons. So, where were Hell's proper forces? It was suspicious is what it was. Crowley couldn't help noting also, that Lucifer had been radio silent since the first Armageddon tanked. Even after Beelzebub eloped with Gabriel, while Lucifer should have been pissed, there'd been no summons to Hell for any meetings, announcements or punishments. And he'd have known if there was, what with getting dragged unwillingly down to Hell being how an official summons by Satan worked. And all of these things going on with the next Armageddon on the cards?

Something more was definitely happening behind the scenes.

Eyes concealed, he watched Shax continue to seethe, while pensively considering Shax's reasons for being there. Were they there to try and trick him back to Hell, to try to manipulate him the same way the Metatron had manipulated Aziraphale into going back to Heaven? It wasn't impossible, although Crowley wasn't sure Shax was that good of an actor. His money would be on guessing they genuinely had no clue. Or maybe Shax was also being manipulated? Whatever the case was, it was suspicious. Lucifer had to be planning something, and that made Crowley feel...concerned, because in any coming war, Aziraphale would be on the front lines, Supreme Archangel and all that, ready to face Hell head on, threats unknown. He didn't like that idea. Not one bit.

Shax inhaled deeply just then, before taking a few steps closer to him again, which, why? Crowley frowned, turning his head just enough to look up at Shax standing beside his chair. And when they spoke next, their human teeth were back and they seemed calmer,

"None of the powerful demons want to be in charge of Hell." and yes, he understood that quite well, because it was hell overseeing Hell, hence why many of the early fallen had decided to not take that job. Pity for Beelzebu- "Now I have been put into this position by default." he tilted his head, expression skeptically amused, since he clearly recalled that Shax had seemed pretty keen on the idea. "But Satan our Master hasn't said anything to me, he won't even send me any instructions, let alone convene with me, because I, I am not..."

Shax trailed off there, jaw working, and Crowley just raised his eyebrows, watching them struggle with having to admit that they weren't high ranking enough to be a blip on Lucifer's radar, on top of not being powerful enough to command all the demons of Hell to obey them. He wasn't sure what Shax hoped to achieve in coming to him though. Surely they knew he wasn't any more interested in overseeing Hell than anyone else they'd asked. In fact, he could definitely be considered the least interested. He'd turned down and talked his way out of so many promotions over the first three millennia in Hell, that the Dark Council had eventually stopped bothering with offering him any. It had filtered down to praise, perks and commendations through the years, until it'd all come to a halt when he'd become a 'traitor'. Taking up being Hell's official ambassador in the Northern Hemisphere of Earth had been the last promotion he'd taken in Hell. And he hadn't regretted it, because Aziraphale had also been stationed in the Northern Hemisphere and...and wow, wasn't that just pathetic.

Who knows, he might have been content with his lot as a demon if he hadn't fallen a second time...

But he had, and after all was said and done, he'd been labeled a traitor, and Beelzebub was gone, and Lucifer seemed to be ignoring his existence, and he was all alone and going through things and why in Hell was Shax bothering him?

Said demon was still talking when he zoned back in, and Crowley groaned loudly, cutting them off,

"Shax, for Satan's sake, what is the point of all this," he rolled his head from side to side exasperatedly, "you're just going on and on, and on. I'm not qualified as a demonic therap-"

"I need your help." Shax announced sharply, their gloved fists clenched tightly.

Crowley already assumed he knew what they wanted, but despite that, after a long huff that buzzed his lips, he looked up at them again and asked anyway,

"With what?" eyebrow cocking to punctuate his question.

Shax's face was pinched with tension when they grit out,

"There are orders arriving for Beelzebub, or rather, in their wake. Orders from Satan our Master. Orders that require urgent attention, that need to be taken care of in preparation for war, and I can't do somhm-" an irritable hum, leading into, "-mmmost of it." and then they turned away abruptly, only to turn back and glare down at him, "It's too much, Crowley, not just because I'm not powerful enough to carry out some of the tasks, but because the amount of tasks ar-"

"You do realize," he said pointedly and loudly to stop Shax from going on, "how redundant it is to be asking me of all demons, to help you with Armageddon the sequel? Me?" he lifted a hand to gesture at himself, "The demon who was labeled a traitor for stopping the original run at ending all life on Earth." he finished, and Shax just stared at him.

After a too long stretch of silence and staring, Crowley turned his head away and said,

"Right." drawing the word out as he pushed himself to standing. He walked by Shax with a sway to his step, so that their shoulders barely brushed as he headed over to the bar nook. Time to start drinking again, especially now that it seemed his suspicions were partly confirmed. Shax was trying to get him back to Hell to be involved in the next Armageddon, just like Heaven had done with Aziraphale. He'd just picked up the bottle and flipped over a glass when he glanced at the other demon over his shoulder to say, "Also, I'm pretty sure I'm on the Dark Council's shit list, they woul-"

"They don't care. Satan our Master's work must be done." Shax said plainly, firmly. Crowley made a face as he unscrewed the cap of the whiskey bottle and poured a double shot for himself, "I must get things done, no matter how. No matter how." they repeated pointedly.

Another sigh as he screwed the cap back on and set the bottle down with a thud, mumbling,

"Yeah, well, not interested."

"Even if Satan our Master commands you?" they hissed, sounding more frustrated than angry.

Crowley took a second to consider Shax's behaviour thus far and decided to call their bluff, asking,

"Does he?" pausing with his hand on the glass, waiting, but when no response was forthcoming, he brought the glass to his lips, muttering, "I'll take that as a no." before drinking the double shot in one swallow.

Shax was quiet behind him as he grabbed the bottle again to pour himself another drink, a triple shot that time, of the Talisker 10 year. He didn't bother to offer Shax anything because he knew they would say no with some exaggerated expression of disgust. As he recapped the bottle and set it down, he glanced over his shoulder again to see if they'd possibly left, because they were so quiet, but instead he found Shax was staring past the rotating door, down into the hallway of the flat. Crowley lifted his glass and walked over to stand beside Shax, slipping his free hand into his pants pocket and looking down the hallway to what they were staring at.

Ah, the statue of the demon and angel...wrestling.

He'd put that in storage previously, before Shax had taken over his flat, but he knew the other demon had seen it before he'd removed it. Crowley assumed they had something to say about it now, for how intensely they were staring at it, so he stood beside them, regarding it along with them while sipping his drink. After at least a full two minutes of tense quiet, Shax turned to look at him,

"They laugh at you, you know." he didn't look at them, keeping his eyes on the statue, "In Hell. They talk about how the angel you threw it all away for, tossed you aside and left you behind, the moment he had a better offer, in the up."

The words stung, just a bit. Okay, more than just a bit. Not the part about the gossiping demons, but the reminder of Aziraphale leaving him. He didn't outwardly react though, he just remained calm as he considered the amber liquid in his glass. Vaguely curious, he wondered how the demons in Hell even knew about any of that, but he wasn't about to waste his time or energy on asking. He did drain his drink though, swallowing the burning liquid and softly sucking in air through his teeth after, while stoically ignoring the painful tug beneath his human ribs and the upset churning in his human stomach. Sometimes having the fully functional anatomically correct human form really was shitty.

"You used to be respected." Shax went on, eyes narrowed at him, "Certainly you were hated, and even envied. Many demons wished for your destruction. But you were respected, Crowley. You were one of those demons who seemed untouchable in some ways. Getting away with what most would be destroyed for, like losing the antichrist and interfering with Armageddon." and actually, Shax sounded bitter, like maybe they envied and/or hated him too. "But now," they snorted, "now everyone laughs and talks about how you were played for a fool by a fanciful, silly, soft, stu-" Crowley turned his head slowly to look down at Shax, "-pid...angel." they hesitated to finish, visibly tensing up.

Crowley stared Shax down through his glasses, and when he slipped his free hand out of his pocket and raised it, it made Shax shift uncomfortably, but all he did was take his glasses off...so he could stare directly into their narrowed, wary blue eyes. Shax was visibly becoming more and more tense, probably able to sense how quietly furious he felt right then. He suspected his eyes were probably glowing yellow, sclera being eclipsed by the vibrant glow due to the flare in his demonic energy. Crowley wasn't weak to his temper though, never had been. Very few things actually made him angry enough to the point where he lost his cool. Still, he tested Shax's give, taking a step forward, pointedly toward them to purposely push them back, and he was pleased when they backed up, hissing, but backing away all the same. Good. Shax knew their place.

Satisfied, he reigned in his anger, choosing to ignore the nasty words they'd said about Aziraphale, after all, Shax was a demon and saying mean shit was second nature to all of them. It was actually part of the job in many ways. He was still annoyed though, and tired, and absolutely done with the conversation. He didn't even bother to put his glasses back on when he turned away from them, saying,

"Get out, Shax." as he walked away, heading into the hallway through the rotating door, intent on going to his bedroom, but he clenched his jaw in irritation when he heard their quick, clipped steps follow behind him. The other demon was quickly getting on his last ner-,

"Wait, Crowley, a compromise then." Shax suggested, sounding tense but also determined. He slowed to a stop right outside the sliding glass doors of his bedroom, turning to look at Shax and shaking his head once, he said,

"Wasting your breath, Shax. Not interested." he raised his empty glass as a dismissive gesture, "Ta-ra."

"Finenotarmageddonthen," they said in a rush, before he'd even had a chance to turn away, "help me with managing Hell's daily affairs."

He almost smiled, almost laughed, but ended up just shaking his head and in an exaggerated tone said,

"Hell, no, literally."

"Satan will destroy me if I fail." they announced, finally dropping the title in the heat of urgency and panic. Crowley paused, and then gave Shax an amused questioning look as it occurred to him that they were...they were trying to appeal to his...good side? How undemonic of them. "I'm not like you, Crowley, not like those of you who can just get away with not serving," they sneered, "not all of us demons get passes."

Was that it? Did Shax think he'd gotten a pass? Crowley was pretty sure Lucifer just didn't give a shit about him for the moment, or maybe he hadn't thought of a terrible enough punishment. It was always in the back of his mind that the other penny would drop eventually...or, wait, was he wrong? He'd thought Shax was totally clueless about anything behind the scenes, but maybe not? Did they know something? Did he really have a pass? Thinking back, Beelzebub had offered him reinstatement and a hefty promotion. If they'd meant it, and he'd actually accepted it, it would have had to be authorized by Lucifer. There would have been official paperwork and everything. Had Beelzebub been planning to leave him to pick up the pieces in Hell if he'd turned Gabriel over? Would they have ditched him to be the 'acting Grand Duke of Hell' when they eloped? Or was Lucifer not even up to speed with what was going on? Too busy with counter plans for the next war...

It all seemed too unlikely, it felt like a reach, but it'd be nice to think he was off the hook. Off the hook and safe to be a freelance demon. And that...that should have been a thought that was accompanied by relief, but in the end, he still felt like he'd lost more than Hell could ever give back to him. Going back almost seemed self-defeating, since being a demon, and choosing to stay a demon, was the reason Aziraphale had left him on Earth. It was the reason there would always be a divide between them...

"Listen. I'll owe you a favour." Shax cut through the silence that had settled, hands clasped against their midsection, posture tense and feet not moving from where they'd stopped by the rotating door, "We've had an amiable accordance all this time, despite you being labeled a traitor. This could be a continuation of that." they suggested. Crowley was barely listening though, his mind working, running through the possibilities as he stared unblinkingly at Shax, who went on talking about how they'd owe him, how they'd return the service if he ever needed it. But Crowley didn't care about Shax or favours, he was thinking about Aziraphale, and secret plans, and Hell and Heaven and Lucifer's ominous silence and war and...rumours. There shouldn't be rumours. He knew the plan, or what had been the plan. And in that plan, there was no mention of the need for Michael, or any other angels, to be using 'backchannels' to leak information. So if there were rumours, either there was something wrong, or the 'leaks' were intentional. It could be that Heaven had some new tricks on their books and they were using Hell's average stupidity against them to gain some kind of upper hand.

And well, he couldn't have that. If Hell was blindsided, he would be blindsided too. He had to know what had changed in the plan if he had any hope of surviving, and if he had any hope of keeping Aziraphale safe too. And maybe it was pathetic that he was still thinking of saving the angel, but it didn't change anything.

"-half the time when I delegate or issue orders," Shax was still talking, "the lesser demons give me a hard time. But if it was you-"

"Once a month." he stated, cutting Shax off. There was a beat of silence, then Shax asked,

"What?" sounding genuinely surprised.

Crowley grimaced at the decision he was making, but he made it anyway,

"Once a month. That's it. Once a month, I'll come down to Hell," he gestured down with the hand holding his glasses, "and I'll sort out whatever I can that you're having trouble with." Shax's cold blue eyes widened, a victorious smile curling their red painted lips, "But I have three conditions." he said firmly, shifting on his feet to face the other demon properly and watching their smile falter, before dropping altogether, replaced by a grimace.

"What are they?" Shax asked stiffly.

"One," he raised his index finger, his glasses dangling in his grasp, "you don't ever show up here like this again. You have your cell phone from your time on Earth, yes?" he looked Shax over, the other demon nodding. He lowered his hand, "Right, so you call first, every time, and don't show up unless I say it's okay." he finished, then added in a less serious tone, words half mumbled, "It's bloody annoying."

Shax nodded,

"Fine. What else?"

Crowley nodded too and then took a short breath to continue,

"Second, if Lucifer ever does make contact with you, you don't...you don't tell him I'm helping you." he hesitated on that point though, because that kind of decision could backfire on both of them. Shax just looked confused though, probably wondering why he wouldn't want Lucifer to know he was 'back' on their side. "You just, you know, lie. You're a demon, you should be good at lying." he didn't sound convinced, even to himself, and he felt even less so when Shax confidently said,

"I am," he made a skeptical face, "and I will. Hell doesn't care how jobs get done, remember. Only that they do-"

"-that they do, yesyes, I know." he talked over them impatiently and not reassured at all, but he was taking the risk to begin with, so he'd have to take what he could get.

Crowley glanced at the empty glass in his hand then, longing for another triple shot, his teeth clenched and slightly bared. He was working himself up to say the final condition, the one that would be him essentially putting himself right back on the radars of both Hell and Heaven.

"Well?" Shax prompted. "What's the third one?"

"Third," he muttered out and then bit the bullet, "...third," he looked at them in the eye, "you tell me any rumours you hear about...about Armageddon two point oh." he said the last four words like he wanted to keep them behind his teeth. Then, with that said and no turning back, he sighed and raised his eyebrows, asking, "Okay?" feeling like he'd just lost something. Lost some ground.

That was proven true when Shax smirked knowingly,

"You want updates about your angel, do you?"

Crowley stared at Shax coldly, and only once their smirk faded did he say,

"Those are my three conditions. Got it?" voice gruff. Shax just nodded again and he blinked then, turning away dismissively and tiredly saying, "Good, now get out." with a tip of his head in direction of the exit. Not that he actually expected Shax to use the door to leave, but the general idea was clear.

They didn't leave though, they just stood there, even as he took the first steps into his room, so Crowley frowned very irritably when he looked at Shax again, saying,

"What, Shax?" a bit loudly.

Shax just glanced down the hall again, presumably at the statue, and then back at him before asking,

"Did you and the angel, ever..." they inclined their head toward the statue and bobbed one eyebrow in a way Crowley assumed was meant to be suggestive. He scrunched up his face a bit, feeling that upset churning in his stomach again, even as he played off the flare of anger he felt as best he could, asking,

"Did we what?" he tilted his head, "Wrestle?" he over pronounced the word, while pointedly not looking at the statue. And he wasn't sure whether he'd expected Shax to actually explicitly clarify what they were asking, but he felt relieved when they just snorted out an amused breath and said,

"It would be, something worthy of quite the commendation, I'm sure; seducing an angel into your bed." no longer looking at him, seemingly speaking more to themselves. Then with a grossed-out expression they added, "Perhaps that's why Beelzebub went off with Gabriel. Perhaps it's all been a ruse to unseat him in Heaven, weaken their ranks."

They were too distracted with imagining nonsense to notice that Crowley sneered, almost getting properly angry because he hated the implication that he would do such a thing to Aziraphale, that he would use the angel in any way, ever, for any personal gain. But ultimately, he knew that any emotional reaction from him would just give Shax satisfaction, to know they'd hit a nerve. So before they looked at him again, he turned away and said,

"Out, Shax." putting a hint of warning into his tone. It was only a few seconds then before he felt the absence of the other demon's presence. He glanced back just to be sure, and when he saw they were finally gone he let the tension bleed out of him completely.

"So much for sleeping for a few years." he muttered to himself as he walked into his room, sighing as he paused to set the empty glass down on the round table, also hanging his glasses on the head of the snake centerpiece before he approached the side of his bed, where he sat down heavily and put his head in his hands. The entire conversation he'd just had had been exhausting and, in the end, not much of a win for him. The only good thing about what he'd agreed to was that he wouldn't be out of the loop as the 'Second Coming' gained momentum, but the major con was that he'd be unofficially working for and in Hell again. That could not possibly end well for him, it was like putting a target on his back...

But whatever he faced he would accept, even if it meant he ended up in a particularly deep pit of Hell for sabotaging Lucifer's plans again. It'd be fine. Just so long as Aziraphale had the highest chance of success and survival. Especially since he doubted the angel was going to be able to 'make a difference' as he surely believed he could, not with the way Heaven worked. He was at a major disadvantage.

Crowley dropped his hands then and blinked sedately at the wall, thinking that; best case scenario, when the two sides ultimately went to war, if Heaven won and Aziraphale was okay, if he somehow managed to survive, he could at least still have a shot of getting away. Although Alpha Centauri was no longer an option since he'd mentioned it in front of Shax and Dagon that day in the bookshop, they'd know where to look for him. But it no longer held the same appeal to him anyway. He'd just have to go somewhere else farther away...

Feeling ten times more miserable than he had an hour earlier, with another sigh, he turned to look at the door his ensuite, deciding that a long hot shower would do his human body a world of good. Indoor plumbing, and luxury showers in particular, was one of humanity's truly wonderful inventions after all, best to enjoy it while he still could.

---

LONDON

---

THREE YEARS, TWO DAYS AND APPROXIMATELY 12 HOURS SINCE 'THAT MORNING IN THE BOOKSHOP'

---

Aziraphale was standing at the bottom of the two steps leading up to the front door of his bookshop. Or rather; the bookshop. Then again, the name was still A.Z FELL & Co. So yes, his bookshop. He supposed Muriel could be considered 'Co' if they liked. That would be more than fair.

Regarding Muriel, he hadn't thought it'd be courteous to them if he just appeared inside suddenly, on the bookshop's upper floor. He didn't know anything about how they were getting on as a human, but he didn't want to cross any boundaries of privacy that they might have developed over the last few years they'd been on Earth. He himself had developed a penchant for privacy during his time, and he thought it polite to consider Muriel might have done the same. He also hadn't thought it would be a good idea to just appear on the lower floor, just in case there were any customers in the shop who might see him randomly corporealize.

Even though, by default, humans generally had a hard time clearly retaining memory about anything ethereal or occult that happened around them, it was still risky and could lead to some bothersome results, since the 'fading memory' thing could take some time, and it wasn't even that they'd necessarily completely forget. It was usually only that their memory would become hazy, unreliable and questionable. Something minor could be forgotten easily enough, like in the case of someone seeing him randomly appear, or suddenly being present when there'd been no sign of entering. It would be 'weird' or 'creepy' but still possible to explain away. Modern humans had reached a point where they rationalized things quite well, and they'd usually move on quickly. Except for the few who didn't. Those ones tended to make a big deal out of seeing something 'other' happen, and so it would go on to possibly escalate, leading to stories of 'supernatural sightings' and all that. Luckily, an anomaly scenario like the 'bookshop incident' three years earlier, would definitely have left most of the witnesses with large blurry or blank spots in their memories, due to the amount of ethereal and occult beings that had been there that day, and the high levels of their combined energies. Human minds would not fare well retaining clear memories of such a thing. Overall though, it was best to avoid such things when one could.

Hence the reason he'd arrived through a small and discreet access gateway humans couldn't see and he'd corporealized before exiting, and then after a moment of orienting, he'd walked his way to the bookshop on his own two human body's legs. And presently, he was standing at the foot of the steps to the entrance of his bookshop...and hesitating. It wasn't that being back was overwhelming per se, he just felt a certain pressure, like a massive weight of urgency and import, which he'd been enduring for three years, bearing down on him even heavier than before. But even though he was finally back on Earth, there to do what he urgently needed to, he was filled with uncertainty and apprehension. Although, really, he shouldn't be surprised that he felt so nervous, or that he felt like a stranger in a strange land, despite being in such a familiar place. Not when nothing had felt right since that day he'd left, in fact, the intense feeling of wrongness and emptiness hadn't left him even once, not in the three short years, which had felt more like decades, that he'd been in Heaven.

He was fidgeting his fingers at his sides as he stood staring at the double doors of the shop, taking in all the feelings, sights, smells and sounds of the people and traffic of Soho, London, none of which felt like the comfort of a place he'd once called 'home'. None of it felt like it mattered much to him anymore either, and sighing softly as he stared at the 'OPEN' sign inside the glass windows of the door, Aziraphale realized that he felt impatient as well. He felt that he did not want to waste any more time. Even as an eternal being, he'd discovered that time could be precious to him, could feel wasted. He'd learned that the hard way, and he'd been counting every moment of every day since those few final seconds he'd been able to look at Crowley from across the distance, before he'd left in such a bad way...

It was his realization of his mounting impatience that had him walking up the two steps and putting a hand out to grab the doorknob, pushing the door open. The bell above the door jingled as it always did and when a wave of bitter-sweet nostalgia, along with the smell of the bookshop, hit him, he couldn't help a small sad smile. He'd always loved books, and his shop, and he'd hung on to those things for so many years, until that moment when he'd thought Heaven and his duty as an angel mattered more. He'd been mistaken about all of it though, because the books, the shop and Heaven were not the things that really mattered to him at all...

Pulling himself from his thoughts, he stepped inside, closing the door before he turned to walk further into the shop. Aziraphale tracked his eyes over the familiar space as he went, looking from the high ceiling and second floor banister to the cluttered bookshelves and old stone tiles. It looked mostly unchanged from what he could tell, except, where his antique cash register used to be, was an updated electronic one and beside it was an empty receipt spike, and a, a...what was it called? That handheld card mach- ah, yes, it was a point-of-sale contraption. The machine was off though and there were no receipts on the spike. It was all quite possibly just for the appearance of 'fitting-in'. But the laptop computer that was set up on the desk in the back was on and looked to be in use.

He couldn't be sure, but it certainly seemed that,

'Muriel has taken rather well to modern technology...and probably to selling my books.' he thought, feeling vaguely annoyed. Some of the books he owned were priceless in Earth's various currencies after all. But the annoyance faded very quickly, because alas, the books were not a significant loss, nothing was a significant loss when compared to leaving Cr-

"Hello and good afternoon! Welcome to-" Muriel appeared from around a bookshelf near the back of the shop with a big smile on their face, but stopped suddenly saying, "Oh! Aziraphale!" when they recognized him. Aziraphale was not hard pressed to return the smile, he had nothing against Muriel after all, but he'd only just turned to face them properly, pleasantly greeting,

"Hello, Muriel." when he saw that Muriel had stopped stiffly several feet away, and that their smile and expression had lessened to something more nervous.

He was only confused for a moment about it before they said,

"I-I mean, s-sorry, I mean, you're the Su-the Supreme-," then their smile was plastered on again, strained but present and they said loudly, "Hello! Supreme Archangel Aziraphale! How can I help you!?" with all the trained default 'enthusiasm' they could muster. Aziraphale just kept smiling, although it softened with sympathy because he understood how Muriel felt. He knew that feeling of being small and inferior when the other higher ranked angels were around, being intimidating and condescending. He'd been there himself.

"It's quite alright, Muriel, and please, just call me Aziraphale." he said kindly, offering a bigger smile and watching them blink and then nod happily, their smile becoming less tense. "How have you been?" he asked, a habit of human politeness that seemed to come back to him quite easily. And he expected Muriel to look at him with annoyance or confusion like the angels in Heaven had those first few weeks he'd been back and trying to be nice and cordial, but they didn't react that way, instead answering quite humanly with,

"I've been great! Thank you for asking!" and...then they kept going, "Earth is actually so interesting and there's so much to see just here in England alone! I've been doing my best to understand as much as I can. And the humans are so fascinating! I've been learning that they often say things that might mean something else, or they can mean it to be funny, to make someone laugh. It's quite confusing to be honest but it's also quite clever. They also have this thing called the internet, which is amazing and just a bit terrifying too, because-" and kept going. Aziraphale just blinked and maintained a smile as Muriel went on, sounding so happy. Well, yes, he supposed he could relate, he'd quite loved Earth too. Still did. It had been about more than just Earth for him though...

He felt a pang of sadness in his chest, which was something he hadn't experienced in a while, having been without a human body. It hurt differently than it had in Heaven, quite literally a physical pain. But it was still caused by the same emotional wound he'd been living with for three years, and as he'd been doing while biding his time, Aziraphale was able to function through the ache.

He made himself focus on Muriel for the moment, partially listening to them ramble while also taking notice of how they were dressed. They wore clothing of creams, browns and white tones; a button-down shirt under a sweater vest with a tartan knee length skirt, knee-high socks and white platform sneakers. It was the type of fashion Aziraphale likened to being called 'nerdy' by humans. It was also oddly similar, if not more nerd chic, than his own way of dressing. They even had spectacles on, and their hair was different, longer and worn in a bun. It was great to see how much they'd adapted to living on Earth and it warmed Aziraphale to see another angel appreciating how interesting and wonderful humans and life on Earth could be. He wondered if they'd discovered the pleasure of actually drinking a cup of-

"-nd then he said, 'can I call you?'" Aziraphale tuned back in at those words, spoken in a confused tone, "And I asked, 'call me what?', and then he laughed and said, 'you're cute'. And now he comes around the bookshop quite often, but he never buys anything and sometimes he brings me human foods and drinks," they made a grossed-out face, "and he keeps talking to me and asking when I'm free." Ah, as he'd thought, there was a human who was romantically interested in Muriel, "And I honestly don't know what he means by that, and I don't know what to do about him." Muriel was still smiling, albeit with more of a frown, "Do you have any advice, Aziraphale?" Advice? Well, he hadn't been expecting that question, "You have thousands of years of experience with humans, I thought perhaps you might understand this human's behaviour?"

And he did, of course, understand what the human male wanted by hanging around Muriel, but instead of answering, immediately, and without conscious thought to, he was imagining how Crowley would answer. Aziraphale could easily picture how Crowley would smirk, bright yellow eyes filled with mischievous humor behind those glasses of his as he'd find a way to make it amusing for himself by talking about the human's attraction to Muriel in a way the other angel wouldn't understand, even though he'd probably still be answering the question. Or he'd possibly exaggerate what it all meant, just to watch Muriel flounder a bit and worry over what to do. He might even tease Muriel about it, knowing full well they likely wouldn't know he was making fun of them...

The thought of Crowley, or really, any thought of Crowley, brought a smile to his face, even though these days his smiles about Crowley were always tinged with sadness. Muriel wouldn't be able to tell though. A human might recognize the sadness in his eyes and smile, but not an angel who barely had a grasp on understanding the ever-changing dynamics of human communication and courting. So Muriel was none the wiser to how his chest ached just then. It really ached quite badly, almost exactly like it had on that day when he'd looked at Crowley from across the street.

He had to swallow the urge to cry right then. Muriel probably knew what crying was, but they would not understand the reasons behind it, not when they were still so new to it all. Even he himself, after 6000 years on Earth, hadn't understood the influx of new, confusing, shocking and incredibly intense emotions he'd experienced that day when Crowley...when Crowley had kis-

"I wonder what Mister Crowley would think of it? He seemed to know so much about humans!" Muriel commented brightly, frown gone and all smiles again, a fortunate feature of their angelic nature which allowed them to bounce back from wondering about 'insignificant' humans' behaviour. They also had absolutely no idea how Aziraphale's stomach had flipped over in surprise at them saying Crowley's name so casually. But it was a good thing really, what they'd said, because Muriel had just done him a favor by giving him an opening to ask about that very being,

"Ah, yes, actually, Muriel, have you," he tried to keep his voice neutral, "have you seen Crowley, recently?" he swallowed a bit sorely, fidgeting his fingers at his sides. Asking about Crowley had been his intention in coming to the bookshop, because he'd tried to locate Crowley after he'd stepped out of the gateway from Heaven, but he hadn't been able to feel the demon, not for as far as he could extend his ability to. So the bookshop had been the first place he thought to go t-

"Seen him?" they repeated, still smiling even as they shook their head, "Oh no, not recently, and actually not at all." Aziraphale felt his stomach sink, "I haven't seen Mister Crowley since that morning here in the bookshop, remember?" how could he forget that terrible morning, "When Gabriel was found, and then the Metatron arrived, and he made you Supreme Archangel and put me in charge of the bookshop!" they sounded so enthusiastic and happy about it all.

Aziraphale tried not to get irritated by that naïve enthusiasm, even as he wondered if he'd ever irritated Crowley with his own brand of cluelessness in their early days on Earth. Probably had done.

"I see." he nodded, keeping up a small tense smile, even as he averted his gaze and breathed quietly through the intensifying ache in his chest. The fact that Crowley had left and never come bac-

"Of course, I didn't want to ever see him again." Aziraphale refocused on Muriel, whose tone was different, and then looking at them he noticed that they seemed nervous again, "I mean, he's a demon, obviously I don't want to see him, or to talk with him." he could only frown, sympathizing yet again as he recognized Muriel's concern of getting into trouble, and he was just about to reassure them that it was okay, but they quickly tried to explain themselves, saying, "It's just that he's the only demon I've ever actually spoken to, and he wasn't what I expected, because he was actually quite nice to me and so I, I mean, he wasn't nice," and it was quickly getting away from them, some mild panic entering their voice, "I shouldn't say a demon is nice, should I? I don't know why I said that, sorry, I-"

"Muriel." Aziraphale cut them off, smiling sympathetically as he took a step closer and raised a hand in a placating gesture, "It's alright." and he watched again as Muriel relaxed slowly, taking in a breath and nodding with a small uncertainly relieved smile. Aziraphale decided then that he had no more to say or do there, and he needed to get going. But first, as to Muriel's original request for advice, he answered, "And I agree, that Crowley would probably have been able to advise you, but I'm afraid I can't be of much help." but only because he didn't know how Muriel would react to knowing a human was romantically interested in them, and also because he didn't want to put Muriel at any risk of deviating from their angelic duties and perspectives. Meddling in human affairs was a far cry from meddling with any angels. Supreme Archangel or not, he didn't want to influence the other angel in any way. "Right-o," he breathed out, less steadily than he'd have liked, what with all his human body's emotions stirring up, "I'd best be getting on, I have business to attend to before I return." he said by way of a departing greeting, turning to leave.

He heard Muriel say 'yes, of course' as he walked to the door, but just when he reached for the doorknob, the other angel spoke again with a smile in their voice, asking,

"Did you and Mister Crowley ever go to have your extremely alcohol breakfast at the Ritz?" putting emphasis on certain words that cut Aziraphale almost to his angelic core.

He turned around to look at them, heart thudding sorely in his chest and blue eyes wide as he asked,

"What-whatever are you talking about?" sounding a little winded. Muriel didn't seem to notice, they just kept smiling, expression baffled and amused as they answered,

"Well, I didn't understand any of it at first, but now I know what alcohol is, and breakfast, and the Ritz, so I've figured it out." they sounded so proud, but Aziraphale's impatience was rising again and he had no time to waste, so when they said, "Alcohol is-" he cut them off, clarifying,

"N-no, I know what those things are, but, where did you hear that?" no smile and voice firmer.

"Oh!" Muriel exclaimed with a 'that's what you're asking' expression, "That morning, when you went out to talk with the Metatron." he instantly felt nauseous, "Mister Crowley told me I should leave. He said 'we need us time', and 'an extremely alcoholic breakfast at the Ritz." Muriel was putting on a voice and smiling but Aziraphale was far from amused, "And he made it very clear that by us, he meant you and him." a self-deprecating eyeroll, "Not me, you and him." they giggled a bit, while Aziraphale could only stare and fight the burn in his nose and eyes.

Crowley had said that to Muriel, he'd intended for them to- but then, when he'd come back to the bookshop after talking to the Metatron...

'Listen, I suppose, I've got something to say. I know we ought to be talking about it...it's probably best if I start off doing all the talking, you do all the listening, 'cause if I don't start talking now, I won't ever start talking. Right? Yes. So-'

He recalled every word so clearly, and how he'd just cut Crowley off. He'd just said, 'hold that thought' and he'd already regretted it a million times over in the last three years, but it hit him harder now knowing that Crowley had been waiting with a confession and a plan for breakfast at the Ritz for the two of them.

Aziraphale forgot to breathe as he experienced an overwhelming amount of emotion in his human body, his eyes becoming wet entirely without his permission. And he was obviously physically emoting enough that Muriel noticed it, but instead of saying something unintentionally insensitive like other angels would, they asked,

"Aziraphale? Are you okay?" appearing concerned, "It looks like you're about to cry, and I've learned that crying usually means something is wrong?" and while there was no compassion behind it, there was also no negativity or judgement. Aziraphale wasn't about to explain the concept of a 'breaking heart' though, so he just took in a deep breath and let it out again, before offering a mild smile to Muriel,

"It's nothing really, just this body. I've been out of it for so long, I think I need to readjust to its sensitivity." he made the relatively true excuse, and Muriel smiled then, accepting it without question,

"That makes sense." they readily agreed, then added, "I just don't use most of the parts, I think the appearance is quite enough." with a smile.

Aziraphale nodded once, thinking of the man who'd taken a liking to Muriel, who was quite literally only human on the surface, and feeling sorry for him. But it couldn't be helped, and he had his own problems to deal with anyway, so nodding, he said,

"Yes, a very wise choice." before idly straightening the flaps of his coat and blinking once against the wetness in his eyes, "Now, if you'll excuse me Muriel, I must get going, I've some terribly important things to do."

"Yes! Yes, sorry I've kept you." they said smiling again, and Aziraphale was already walking out of the bookshop when he heard them say to let them know if he needed help. He closed the door behind him and walked down the steps without looking back, not wanting to encourage Muriel. After all, he wouldn't need their help, and it was actually better if Muriel didn't get too close to him.

He also didn't need to look back at the bookshop as he navigated his way through people and then cars, heading across the street. The shop had once meant so much to him, but on its own it was just a building with books in it. Without the greater purpose it'd ended up serving, being the place he could always be found by Crowley, it didn't mean anything. Talking to Muriel hadn't been a complete waste at least, because having learned what Crowley had said to them that day only made him more determined and focused on finding the demon as soon as possible. Which was why his next stop was Nina's coffee shop.

As he stepped up onto the pavement he glanced over the store front, finding that everything appeared to be unchanged. It also wasn't too busy outside, with only two people sitting at a table together, and through the windows he could see inside was also mostly empty. The clock in the bookshop had said it was after six though, and with the fading daylight, Aziraphale knew it meant it was the end of the day, so the shop would be closing soon.

He walked up to the door then and pushed it open, stepping in and stopping just inside the entrance, and despite how difficult it was, he plastered on a smile when he saw Nina, who was just rounding the corner of the counter, heading behind it. When she spotted him, she paused where she was and stared at him, not returning his smile and looking surprised and, well, she had another emotion on her face that he couldn't quite read, but he somehow felt it wasn't a positive one.

All the same, he continued to smile and greeted,

"Hello, Nina." and a part of him was genuinely happy to see her.

She stared for a few seconds longer and then raised her eyebrows,

"Mister Fell, wow, I was definitely not expecting to see you." she said a bit stiffly, and then with that same air of negativity she continued what she'd been doing, going behind the counter and putting something away. He didn't know what to make of her attitude, but he didn't have the time or the patience to try and figure it out, so he just chose to ignore it and walked up to the counter.

She'd just finished some other task, and she came to stand across the counter from him, asking,

"Can I get you anything?" in that same stiff way. He powered through her attitude, clasping his hands at his front and using the standard human conversation starter of,

"How are you?" and then he added, "And how's Maggie-" but when he glanced back over his shoulder, through the windows to where Maggie's shop should be, he saw an ice cream shop instead. He frowned and turned back to look at Nina, "What happened to Maggie's shop?" he asked, genuinely curious and confused. Maggie had loved that shop!

Nina had put her hands on the counter and was leaning against it as she gave him an unimpressed but thoughtful look, and Aziraphale had the distinct feeling that he was being appraised. Sized up, as it were. After a beat of weathering that look, Nina just facially shrugged and shook her head,

"She decided to pack it in, felt like it was time to move on."

"O-oh." his face fell, a feeling of solicitude setting in, "Is she okay?"

Nina answered quickly, saying,

"No big deal, she's on her feet again." aiming for nonchalance but not quite managing it, because she sounded a bit angry. Then she sighed and added, "She's started an online store, selling music merchandise and paraphernalia, and the records too." and her tone became a little less cold as she talked about Maggie, "She's actually good at running an online store, and gramophones are making a steady come back, so she does okay with online sales."

He smiled genuinely then,

"That's wonderful." he felt so relieved to hear she was doing okay. He hadn't thought much about everything he'd been leaving behind that day when he'd followed the Metatron up to Heaven. His mind had first been racing, and he'd gone from being so excited to utterly devastated and then by the time he'd gotten into that elevator, he'd just felt stubbornly determined, and he'd only had one thing on his mind. Everything else had ceased to matter. Unfortunately, Maggie and Nina had been forgotten. So, to see Nina was fine, and to hear that Maggie was doing well was great new-

"Did you lose weight?" Nina asked suddenly, which snapped him out of his thoughts and, for the first time since he'd arrived on Earth some 45 minutes earlier, he turned his attention to his human body. Aziraphale took a moment to look down at himself and he frowned slightly,

"It would...seem so." he answered absently, because it appeared to be the case. It wasn't much, since his human form had always been on the softer side, but when compared to how he'd looked when he was last on Earth, especially after those few years of peace and relaxation when he'd stopped reporting to Heaven, he supposed it was noticeable. His human body seemed to have shed some weight during its time in disuse, not being sustained by all of the meals and snacks and drinks he'd used to ingest.

"Are you on a diet?" he looked away from himself, focusing back on Nina, "Or is it from the stress of whatever new once in a lifetime job you got when you left three years ago?" she asked, and her tone was back to being colder, and was now carrying a note of judgement.

"A new- a new job?" he was still a bit thrown after looking at himself, having also noticed how new his clothes appeared, and he was frowning now, trying to focus on and follow what Nina was asking about. She tilted her head and frowned slightly as well,

"Mister Crowley said you left suddenly because you got a 'dream job' offer," she lifted her hands to make the air quotes, "all those years ago. Was that it?" and then she crossed her arms over her chest, looking at him expectantly.

Once again, his stomach dropped and his human heart skipped a beat at hearing Nina mention Crowley so casually, just as Muriel had, but it sounded like a conversation she and Crowley might have had post his leaving for Heaven, which meant it might have been more recent.

He could only focus on that when he asked,

"Did he?" rhetorically at first, and then actually asking he said, "When exactly did he say...that?" just as Nina made a gesture for him to wait, before walking away to go and tend to a customer seated somewhere off to the left. He didn't have much patience for waiting but he also knew he couldn't insist on getting answers. He had to be polite and stay calm. Aziraphale briefly closed his eyes and took a breath, casting out his angelic senses, taking a chance again on finding Crowley that way...but there was nothing, and when he opened his eyes again, he frowned at the perpetual ache in his chest.

He glanced at Nina, who was smiling and talking to the customer, and he tried to picture how such a conversation between them came about. It was difficult to do so, even more so than picturing Crowley so boldly telling Muriel to leave and saying they needed 'us' time. Crowley was just usually so surly and abrupt and generally unfriendly to everyone, especially humans. At least that had always been the case when it didn't involve demonic work. When he'd been working for Hell, he'd always had his charm turned up, quick to use his silver tongue and flash a roguish grin at a hapless human, but normally he'd been hard pressed to tolerate humans. So, had he been friendly with Nina? Had he been happy visiting the coffee shop? It hurt to think Crowley was getting on happily, but he still tried to imagine it. He'd spent a lot of time imagining and remembering Crowley in the last three years, it had become something of a guilty pleasure to recall the distinct way he walked, talked and moved. And the way he teased and smiled, and how he often intentionally overreacted and overacted. And also how silly he could be sometimes. Aziraphale remembered it all, and imagined other things, with such deep fondness and so much...so much lo-

"So, are you back for good now or just visiting?" Nina asked as she returned behind the counter, arms folding over her chest again. Aziraphale blinked a few times as he focused on her, but he hedged to answer, since the reason he'd returned was both very simple and very complicated and involved information that he could not and would not ever tell a human anything about, let alone explain in any detail. So he chose to tell the core truth and omit the rest,

"I've returned to see Crowley." he said, tone a bit tense and flat, chest aching and aching. And the fact that Nina didn't look impressed at his words had Aziraphale once again feeling like she was judging him. He half expected her to accuse him of something when her eyes narrowed, but instead she broke the silence in a much worse way when she asked,

"Are you sure he wants to see you?"

...a much, much worse way. That question stung sharply. It was worse than an accusation, it felt a bit like when he'd been punched by Sandalphon. He didn't even need to breathe, yet he couldn't take a breath if he'd wanted to. He only managed to frown, and Nina responded to that saying, "I just think that if it were me, and my partner just went off like you did for whatever reason, and never mind for three whole years, I wouldn't ever want to see them again."

Partner? Did she think- or, did, did she know? How? What had she and Crowley talked about? Had he missed something in the days leading up to the confession? Was that why she seemed angry at him?

Aziraphale had no energy to ask any questions though, and he no longer had the strength to smile either, so he didn't even try, he just looked at Nina and quietly said,

"Yes, well, even so. I-I have to see him," because he absolutely had to, "I have to speak with him." he was wringing his fingers, and then he nodded and added with as much conviction as he could muster, "It's extremely important that he hears what I have to say." chest aching and aching.

Nina stared at him again and then she just shook her head,

"You remind me of that song by Dido, it's called White Flag, d'ya know it?" he barely shook his head in answer when she continued talking, "I always thought that song represented someone who was selfish, and that's how you sound right now. Selfish." it was his turn to stare at her. When she went on, she lowered her voice, "Have you even considered that he might be trying to move on," she dropped her hands to slap against her sides, tone sounding less judgmental and just a little emotional, "to get over how you just left him? And that you just showing up again now, is going to mess with his feelings?"

He was honestly struck speechless at the idea she presented him with. He had no idea what Nina did know or didn't know, or how much she was assuming or just guessing, but her words...well, they actually felt quite miserably valid. Maybe- maybe Crowley really was just trying to get on with his existence. Maybe Crowley just wanted to move on, maybe he'd given up on them being an us. Aziraphale could still clearly hear Crowley's last words to him, the gruff and detached way he'd said; 'don't bother' and it was starting to reverberate in his head when Nina sighed more loudly and he looked at her, eyes feeling wet again.

She seemed to deflate from her judgmental anger then, her expression mildly contrite when she asked,

"Well, if that's why you're back, why are you here in my shop and not off seeing him?"

And that was, well, it was a logical question from her perspective. The thing was, the fastest way he had to find Crowley wasn't turning up any results, since he hadn't been able to sense the demon's presence even further than the distance of his Mayfair flat. However, he knew that didn't mean Crowley wasn't in London since they'd both been actively keeping themselves concealed during the years after the first attempt at Armageddon, having used human methods to stay in contact during that time. So it was entirely possible Crowley was maintaining his low profile, in which case, Aziraphale would have a hard time finding him unless they were in relatively close proximity, or if Crowley used a fairly large amount of demonic power on a miracle or something.

To answer Nina, speaking as steadily as he could, he settled on,

"I can't seem to get a hold of him." which was vaguely true. Nina raised her eyebrows and nodded,

"Not answering your calls? That's not a good sign." she said, not entirely unkindly, but still enough to hurt him some more. Aziraphale just pulled his mouth into the approximation of a smile and repeated his earlier question calmly, which she hadn't answered,

"Nina, when exactly was it that," he forced himself to stop fidgeting his fingers, clenched his hands into fists instead, "that Crowley was here?"

Nina's eyes widened briefly and then she made a face like she really had to think about it before blowing her cheeks out and shaking her head,

"Years, actually." Aziraphale was filled with that sinking feeling again, and he blinked a few times in dismay. She easily noticed his expression because she was a human, not a clueless angel, but instead of softening to his crestfallen state, the judgmental air returned as she said, "It was about two months or so after you just up and left him." oh, "M'not sure why he came here, he just showed up with his outdated car blasting music far too loudly, then he came in and ordered his six shots of espresso. Then he sat over there," she pointed off to the side and he glanced there, listening to her carefully, hanging on every word, building a mental picture, "and we talked for a few minutes while he drank it, Then-"

"You talked?" he couldn't help interrupting, "I mean, sorry, could you, um...m-may I ask what about?" he wanted to know; the last words Crowley had said to him were still ringing in his ears.

She gave him another unimpressed look and said,

"Nothing too serious." and Aziraphale took that as a 'no you may not' since her tone was curt, and when he just nodded, feeling defeated, she finished, "Then he left, and he hasn't ever come back."

Aziraphale just lowered his gaze, swallowing against the ache. He knew he'd left in a bad way, he knew he'd hurt Crowley, and he would never forget the sound of Crowley's voice when he'd said 'don't bother' and the sight of his back as he'd turned and walked away. Or the unreadable look on his face as he'd stared across the street, watching him leave. And now he was suddenly back, and he'd known it wouldn't be easy and yes, he was quite possibly being selfish...but he had things he needed to say and do and fix. He desperately needed to see Crowley and Nina couldn't help him. He needed to keep going, to start looking elsewhere. He supposed his next best option was to go to the flat Crowley had always lived in, after all, he had asked it back from Shax that day so-

"Can I, ask you something?" Nina said then, sounding uncertain, and Aziraphale refocused on her to find her leaning both hands on the counter again, her previous judgmental and negative attitude gone, replaced by a suspicious and curious look. He didn't really want to, but he found himself nodding in response, and then when she leaned forward a bit, he did so as well, listening as she asked quietly, "What is- I mean, what is he?" Aziraphale frowned, genuinely caught off guard by the odd question,

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean?" he said honestly, mind still mostly stuck on how to find Crowle- wait, was she asking that about Crowley?

"I know it's a strange question," she admitted, glancing to the side, "but I just- I can't really put my finger on why, and I feel like I should remember something, but I don't and, and," a frustrated sigh, "well, something about him always just comes across as...bloody weird." she looked right at him, frowning. Aziraphale wasn't surprised to hear that she didn't remember, after all, that was the nature of beings like them being revealed around huma-, "You're both weird, actually." he raised an eyebrow, "And that night, in your bookshop, and the next morning too, I just remember feeling weird, there was a lot of weirdness happening, but I can't remember why it was weird." she was saying in a quiet voice and narrowing her eyes at him. Aziraphale started to say,

"Well, I'm sure-"

"And then the last time when he was here, I felt it again. I know something weird happened," she was shaking her head, "it was something, something strange about his face, or...or, yes! His eyes!" she said with a triumphant smile and Aziraphale's eyes widened at that, "Yes, his eyes were strange...I think, and something," her smiled faded to confusion again, "something was wrong with the music?" she sounded like she was asking herself, questioning her unreliable memory.

Aziraphale could tell she was struggling with hanging onto the train of thought, but like fine sand through a sieve, it simply kept falling through the holes of her preternatural memory loss. To help distract her further, he put out just the slightest bit of his angelic aura to further blur her memory and then he attempted to fill in some of the gaps with plausible information,

"What he is, is an antiques dealer, you see." he said, "He dabbles in various areas of the trade, and by default people in such niche vocations tend to be a bit eccentric, or as you called it, weird." he finished, watching as she blinked a few times, probably still trying to hold on to what she'd been thinking about, but with the gentle emanation of his angelic essence and nothing around them to keep the thoughts valid, the train of thought ultimately didn't stick. He saw the moment she let it go, saying,

"That explains the car." Aziraphale kept up his mild smile and nodded, glad to have successfully filled in some of the troubling blanks in her memory. He was just about to excuse himself to leave then, when she asked, "Is that how you two met?"

He turned back from where he'd glanced out the window of the shop, at where Crowley's favoured and always miraculously available parking spot was.

"I'm sorry?" he asked to stall as he processed her question.

"I asked if that's how you met him, Crowley? You're an antique book collector, he's an antiques dealer, seems like the perfect set up for a meet cute." she sounded like she wanted to roll her eyes. And Aziraphale didn't know what a meet cute was, but her random guess at how they met was actually not so far off, so he nodded,

"Ah yes, we met through...our work." which was the truth.

She stared at him again, some lingering judgement in her expression, until she let out another sigh and glanced to the side at the wall clock,

"It's almost closing time," she pointed out, looking at him again, "and if you're planning on seeing Mister Eccentric tonight, at a decent hour, you should probably get going."

Well, yes, it would be wonderful if it were that simple, but as the human expression went; it was easier said than done. Nina wouldn't know that though, so he just nodded with a weak smile,

"Too right, I shall be on my way." he agreed and stepped back from the counter, and when he raised his hand in a parting wave, he noticed that Nina looked like she felt bad for him, or perhaps about her attitude. Either way, before he could fully turn away, she said,

"Can I get you anything before you go," glancing over him as if deciding something, "something sweet, maybe hot chocolate, or a mocha if you want coffee?" she sounded like she was asking, yet she was already preparing a to-go cup as he stood watching, "And I'm out of Eccles cakes and cheesecake, but I've still got," she paused in making the drink to lean to the side, looking into her confectionery display, "Devil's food cake, cinnamon rolls, scones and...one blueberry muffin." she finished, glancing at him expectantly.

Aziraphale was stunned into silence for a moment, and not because she was suddenly being nice to him, but rather because after having gone so many years in Heaven without consuming any human food, it all sounded wonderful. But he really didn't have time to be sitting around somewhere eating cake, finding Crowley was far more important, so he just gestured to the cup she was busy with and nodded,

"Just the beverage will be fine, thank you..." but he trailed off because she was side eyeing him as she worked. He'd only just raised his eyebrows in question when she said,

"So, it is a diet then?" and she sounded vaguely amused, especially as Aziraphale looked down at himself again and hovered his hands awkwardly at his sides, then she said, "No judgement, I mean, you look good, and many people are on a health kick these days," he blinked, "so, you know, it's good. But," she finished with the drink, setting it down and popping a lid on it, "just so you know, you looked fine before as well," she actually did smile then, or rather, she smirked, "and I'm pretty sure Mister Crowley liked you just the way you were." she finished, then proceeded to tidy up whatever she'd just been busy with, as if she hadn't just sent Aziraphale's human heart racing with those last words.

In contradiction to having wanted to cry a few times already since being back in his human body, he was now contending with how hot his face felt. He felt...flushed. He'd been 'flushed' emotionally and mentally quite often in Heaven, whenever he thought about his and Crowley's physical human bodies making contact, like during that kiss, and sometimes he even imagined a bit more. But his thoughts of physical contact, when in an incorporeal form of himself in Heaven, didn't come with an actual blush!

"Well, that's, I..." he didn't know what to say, quietly huffing out a breath and looking at the to-go cup. Nina finished what she'd been doing and seeing him standing there like an idiot, she came over again to slide the cup across to him, smiling in a genuinely friendly way, as if to encourage him. He looked at her and smiled as well, not a big smile, but a genuine one. And feeling just a little better in the face of her words of kindness, he decided to give into his desire to eat something delicious. And it was an inside joke, just for himself, when he said, "Actually, Nina, I think I'll take a slice of the Devil's Food Cake."

"No problem." she said, continuing to smile as she went about getting the cake, putting a thick slice of the decadent chocolate dessert into a to-go box for him. And when she brought it over to him, she told him, "It's on the house." making Aziraphale belatedly realize he didn't even have any money, so it was just as well.

He took his leave then, saying his thanks and bidding Nina goodbye with very hot ears, since Nina had winked at him and wished him 'good luck with his man'. He was smiling though, when he exited the shop and as he started walking he imparted blessings to Nina and her coffee shop, and after a glance across the street to where Maggie's music shop used to be, he also mentally said a blessing for her. His chest still ached, but it had lessened somewhat, and as he neared the bus stop with a hot coffee in one hand, a cake box in the other and his destination not too far away in Mayfair, he tried to tell himself it was going to work out fine.

Even so, he couldn't help thinking of what Nina had said about him being selfish, and wondering if Crowley really wouldn't want to see him. How would Crowley react? Would Crowley be angry? Or maybe he'd be dismissive and not really care at all. He couldn't decide which one would hurt more...

He was caught up in his thoughts as he walked for several minutes along the crowded pavement, only absently minding the traffic when he crossed the street, and then finally he'd made it to the main street where there were less crowds to navigate. He walked at a faster pace over to the nearest bus stop, where he stood under the shelter along with the few other people waiting there. But despite his hurrying and impatience, he didn't know how long a bus would take to come along, and he had to be careful about using anything other than small miracles while on Earth, so he couldn't make a bus happen along sooner than it otherwise might. It was frustrating, but he had to wait .

He took in a quiet breath to try and settle his stressed human nerves, and when he did he inhaled the scent of the coffee he was carrying. Aziraphale had nearly forgotten about it. He looked at the coffee cup then and considered taking a sip, but then he suddenly remembered Nina's comments about his weight, and his attention turned to the cake box.

Thinking about her words brought a small frown to his face. If he had to estimate, he thought he looked about the same as he had during World War 2. It had been a stressful time to be an angel, he'd been so very busy during the war, too busy to indulge in fine food and drinks as often as he liked. Being in Heaven had been busy too, but also, there'd been no food or drink to indulge in. Still, the change was hardly much. But Nina noticing it, and then pointing out that Crowley had liked him the way he'd been, brought a new awareness to him. Aziraphale had always been...soft, but he'd never given that any thought with regards to Crowley having an opinion about it. So he had no idea, and no way of knowing, what Crowley thought of his human body's appearance. He hadn't been conscious of it before, but he was now, which honestly didn't feel great. Was it something to worry over? Did it matter?

With his small frown of concern lingering, Aziraphale looked down at himself, only to be reminded that aside from the minor weight loss, all of his usual clothes were now crisply brand new, with not a single wrinkle or faded area and, and oh, no, instead of a bowtie, he was wearing a solid blue tie.

That simply would not do! It was too much like...like, Gabriel!

Quickly glancing around to make sure he wouldn't be noticed, with the hand holding the coffee cup, Aziraphale extended two fingers and subtly drew them down through the air, changing out the blue tie for his usual tartan bowtie. He doubted Crowley would notice or care about such a detail, but just in case, he didn't want Crowley to think he'd changed in any way, or at least, not in any way that counted.

He tried to smile then, to reassure himself things would go well, but he barely managed it, because he knew a silly tartan bowtie was the least of the problems he'd caused between himself and Crowley.

---

The bus arrived after about fifteen minutes of waiting, and with a minor miracle to make the driver overlook him boarding, Aziraphale sat in a window seat throughout the short trip to Mayfair. But it felt too long to him, every stop irritating him, because even though he'd only been on Earth for under two hours by the time he arrived in Mayfair, time was precious in his current situation.

The bus stop was another few minutes on foot from Crowley's flat, and after a brisk walk, once he arrived at the building, Aziraphale stopped to stand in the square outside the entrance. He decided then to test his senses once again, since with his proximity now being more favorable, he would definitely be able to tell if Crowley was home...

…and he'd foolishly gotten his hopes up, only to have them dashed when he found no trace of Crowley in the building, which meant he wasn't even at home and just keeping his presence low key; he actually wasn't there at all.

It was incredibly discouraging, because he had such limited time, two or three days at most, and to start he was only so sure Crowley was even still in London, or even in the UK at all. But he had no other leads or means of finding Crowley, so he'd wait, even if he waited two whole days. It was all he could do.

---

So he did.

He used a minor miracle to make humans who noticed him overlook him, like he had the bus driver, and then he just waited. At first, he went inside and waited in the building's lobby, where he sat in one of the sofas of the waiting area. He started out keeping up his optimism, thinking of what he'd say when he saw Crowley again after so long, and eventually, after he'd thought through a hundred scenarios, he remembered he had the coffee and cake. So he ate and drank, drinking the cold mocha latte and eating the cake with the small disposable plastic fork Nina had put inside the box.

He barely tasted it in the end, far too distracted. Especially as the wait ticked on steadily into several hours, and then night became early morning hours, until more time passed, and the sun was rising on the next day.

Aziraphale was swallowing against the increasingly intense ache in his chest by this point and trying to think of what else he could possibly do.

As the sun rose higher into the sky, he started to feel restless, so he decided to move around while not going far. He started by going up to the top floor and waiting right outside Crowley's door, tempted to go in but not wanting to overstep any boundaries Crowley might have after he'd damaged their relationship. After only an hour though, he left the building again, going out to sit in the small garden area in the square outside the apartment building. He sat there for most of the day, mind racing and chest aching, fidgeting his fingers, posture tense and face frowning.

He ended up back inside the lobby by mid afternoon and there he waited again, all the while keeping his senses alert for any hint of Crowley as far as he could sense. But by almost 6 PM that evening, there was still nothing, and Aziraphale was starting to consider risking staying on Earth longer, wondering if maybe, just maybe, the Metatron would take longer to notice he was gone. Even as he knew it was a bad idea, he knew he shouldn't push his luck on time, Aziraphale considered it anyway.

As it neared 8 PM, he ended up sitting outside again, perched on the edge of the stone and tile wall partition surrounding some decorative plant features. Sitting so stiffly, Aziraphale immediately noticed when his hands started to shake, and he knew it was because he was thinking about having to leave, to go back to Heaven without seeing Crowley, probably for another several years. The idea alone made him feel sick to his stomach and he clenched and unclenched his fists where his hands were rested on his thighs.

Aziraphale felt his eyes become wet then, and wetter still as he quietly said,

"Where are you, Crowley?" sadly thinking, 'I need you.'

---

MEANWHILE

The really shitty...like, really shitty thing, about agreeing to help Shax, was that he actually had to do it.

He had to actively go to Hell and do the job.

But he'd known it was a shitty and bad idea when he'd agreed, he'd known how tedious and miserable and dismal running Hell's affairs was, he'd been in Hell often enough through time to have witnessed Beelzebub at the height of frustration and on the edge of scratching the skin off their face just to get a reprieve from the mundanity and inane bureaucracy of it all. Although, they'd usually ended up taking their anger out on the lessor demons whenever they got too angry or annoyed, which had been often.

Crowley wasn't so easily angered, or not truly angered anyway. He'd first have to care to actually get angry, and he didn't give a flying anything about anything, especially not Hell.

That said, he was perpetually annoyed these days, both on Earth and in Hell, because when he was up top, humans were often tiresome and got on his nerves. And he couldn't just make them 'disappear' anymore like he'd used to in the old days. He'd stopped *killing humans just for pissing him off or inconveniencing him sometime after World War 2. Partly because modern human technology made it more difficult to just off one of them without it becoming a whole thing, so Hell had updated its policies to make it that demons could no longer directly harm humans, but it was mostly because of Aziraphale. The angel hadn't approved, and Crowley hadn't wanted to upset him. He didn't linger on the thought of why he was still following that unspoken rule...

As for the dregs of Hell, well, the majority of demons were just so bloody stupid it was impossible not to be irritated by them. But he still didn't get angry, not enough to ever send them off to be tortured, or to discorporate or destroy them himself...or, okay, except for that one time a few months earlier, when he'd dragged and shoved that one demon off into a deep drop off pit filled with writhing centipedes and scorpions. But he felt justified about that, since they'd spilled some disgusting, hellishly stinking sludge onto him. And yes, maybe he'd overreacted because he could easily have cleaned himself up, as he did a moment later, but he had a tendency to overdo things when he was in a bad mood. And he was constantly in a bad mood these days. And anyway, it didn't even count, because literally no one cared.

So, okay, generally, humans, demons and Hell's humdrum simply weren't important enough to bother him that much. Really, there'd only ever been one being in existence who was able to get a genuine rise of anger –or any other emotion for that matter- out of him. But not anymore.

Now Crowley was all about himself.

Unfortunately, being as such, still left him stuck working in Hell.

And Crowley honestly didn't even feel like the 'favour' he was doing for Shax was worth anything to him, because in the past few years of making his monthly trip to Hell, he hadn't heard any real news about the 'Second Coming' through the 'back channels', or even the official channels of Hell. There was a crap ton of Beelzebub's work to do though, which kept him plenty busy, and sometimes even pushed him past his limits and had him feeling out of touch with himself and a little too close to Hell. On those occasions, after his 'work' was done, he always went back to Earth, straight to his flat, and he isolated himself for several days. He coped by drinking, obviously.

For all of his trouble, and as far as he'd been able to tell, Beelzebub's workload didn't have any obvious ties to Armageddon 2.0, just the usual stuff of corrupting humankind on a somewhat grander scale than the average demon errand required. The only thing he'd seen so far that had any relation to the coming war, were a few plans involving preparation for possible war strategies, but the plans were quite vague and undetailed. Which of course, had him suspicious that the Dark Council were giving him 'something' to look at to keep him there, filling in for Beelzebub. But even though he was suspicious about it, Crowley kept returning, because he was already in pretty far over his head, so what was the point of backing out now?

Aside from that, it was business as usual for the most part. When Beelzebub's work was done, the rest of the work he had to sort though was mind-numbingly dull. He'd accepted it though, just as he'd accepted that no news about Armageddon 2.0 was probably good news. He really hoped that Heaven was having logistical problems or something, and that the whole thing would be delayed for a few more millennia. And who knew? In a few thousand years more, humans might have wiped themselves out. They were surprisingly good at making things worse for themselves. What would Hell and Heaven fight over then?

He was smirking at the thought, even as he was still dealing with 'the shittiest thing' about agreeing to do Shax a favour; i.e. 'extended hours'. It turned out that Shax wasn't kidding about the amount of work to do, and so his monthly trips to Hell ended up taking more of his time and effort than he'd assumed. And Shax was only barely helpful, because despite not being the dumbest of the lot, Shax was still pretty stupid and they required a certain amount of management all on their own. Which meant he ended up helping them a lot more than he'd thought he'd have to, extending himself so far as to advise Shax when they were about do something logically impaired, and often just outright taking a task off their hands. And Crowley wasn't blind or stupid, unlike his 'kin', he knew Shax was pleased by his actions, and he could see what was happening. He could tell that Shax was slowly backing off more and more and that he was taking on most of the responsibility, and that eventually he'd be taking on all of it. He suspected that was what the Dark Council wanted.

No actually, he knew it. He knew what was happening and he knew he should get out quickly, run off to some obscure part of the universe before Lucifer got wind of things and decided to make anything official, decided to lock him down with a contract. If Lucifer didn't already know...

So, yes, he knew. And he knew the risks, but even though he knew, he was letting it happen, because, well, he had nothing else going on, nothing to care about. It'd started out as a way to stay in the loop, but after a while he'd just become used to it, which was awful. But it still wasn't the worst set up, it was definitely better than other demons had it, and better than he'd had it in the early days of Hell. So, not the worst gig. Because aside from the shitty three or four days, sometimes a week, he'd spend in Hell once a month, or when he was isolating after spending too long tapping into the more demonic side of his being, he was otherwise free to do whatever he wanted.

He was able to come and go as he pleased, with no one checking on him, or bothering him about what he was doing on Earth, or monitoring his miracle usage. He even got to keep his flat, all expenses paid. Shax had even stuck to calling first if they needed him for something outside of his 'work hours', never just showing up. He'd really become a freelance demon, and it worked for him...

So what if he drank all the time? It wasn't like it could do any bodily damage to him, let alone kill him. And so what if he felt lonely? He'd spent the first few millennia of his life as a demon feeling that way anyway, it wasn't like it was new.

All things considered, he was getting on well enough for the time being.

Presently he was in a very messy, dingy and poorly lit office; it was one of Beelzebub's former offices, one of the larger ones which didn't smell too bad. It still had the rank odour of dampness and death, but all of Hell smelled like that so there was nothing for it. Beelzebub's former offices were supposed to be Shax's now, although technically, they were his too. Or maybe just his, since Shax only really used one of them. He didn't know how to feel about that, about calling anything in Hell, his.

At least the filth and mess didn't faze him, not much more than swallowing Beelzebub's flies or enduring Hastur's uniquely disgusting stench ever had. It was the 'norm' anyway; the grossness of Hell, the smells too, it was all par for the course. He always just made sure he cleaned himself up whenever he left. As it was, he hadn't lifted a finger to sort out any of the mess Beelzebub left behind in their various working spaces, he just worked around it and when he needed something from the mess, he made another demon find it for him.

Right then he was sitting in one of Beelzebub's large old throne chairs, which was dark and grimy and had a headrest, wide armrests and large legs decorated with the sharp broken bones of some sorry creature. The seat and back cushioning were quite comfortable though, hence the reason he was languidly reclining in it, slouching low and sitting sideways with his leather clad legs crossed over at the knee as he flipped through a file stained with questionable marks and dirt. He was wrapping up his work, currently sorting through proposed plans for mass soul damnation opportunities in various places on Earth; standard Hell-esque errands that he was delegating out to other demons.

Unsurprisingly, they listened to him. Shax had been right, they didn't like him and they probably all sneered at him behind his back, but they didn't step out of line and generally did what he told them, albeit with a lot of mistakes and delays. But that was because they were just really bad at their jobs, he didn't take it personally.

The office he was currently in was actually one he favoured, not just because it didn't smell too bad, but because he liked its location. It was fairly deep down in Hell, suspended over a deep bottomless hot black pit, into which the damned were often tossed to fall for an eternity while they were seared on and on and on. That didn't interest him though, he'd sent plenty of people to their damned fate in his time, so he barely even noticed the screams or general activity around the pit. What he liked, was that office was fairly peaceful, since it was quite far away from the busiest part of Hell's sprawling halls and rooms and torture areas, so there wasn't too much traffic right outside the door and he barely had to talk to anyone, if anyone at all, during the time he spent there.

At that moment though, he wasn't alone. Furfur was present, the one who'd been promoted to Shax's assistant and an 'acting' Duke of Hell, and was now technically his assistant. Crowley didn't talk much to him though, and while he sensed it pissed the other demon off that he didn't really acknowledge him, or that they apparently knew each other, he honestly didn't care. It wasn't like they'd been friends or something, regardless of how Furfur had insisted, he just didn't remember the other demon. Furfur was sitting off to the side of the office at a desk there, sorting through some of Beelzebub's stacks of old files, trying to do the impossible task of catching up on backlog.

As for him, he was so done with being in Hell by that point. It'd been five bloody days already. He wanted to get out. Firstly, he wanted out of the stench of Hell, he'd much rather be breathing in the smell of London's considerable pollution. And then he wanted to drink, a lot.

He grumbled under his breath as he assigned the final task with the fire lit tip of his contact-dirtied index finger. And he was just signing an illegible signature that was meant to be Shax's name, when the door opened, followed by the head of the annoying demon, Eric, glancing around until they spotted him and exclaimed,

"Lord Crowley-!"

"Don't call me that." he stated loudly and sharply, pulling his face with his teeth bared. He hated that.

"Oh, right!" Eric remembered, probably only for the next five minutes, "Crow-"

"What. Is. It?" he asked stiffly, not turning his head but glancing at the demon by the door with a lazy glare of his bare eyes. He felt exasperated just seeing Eric standing there, the annoying demon who it seemed was impossible to be rid of. Crowley had seen Shax and other demons discorporate him more than a few times, but he always popped up again way too fast. Ugh.

Eric seemed oddly chipper, although he almost always did, and he was grinning when he said,

"We just got a new batch of the damned in, terrorists or something," glancing from Crowley to Furfur, who had stopped what he was doing to listen, "they're assigned to be flumed into the river of fire," how original, "we're going to be taking bets on which ones stay above the surface the longest. Want to join?" he sounded delighted.

Crowley only barely refrained from rolling his eyes,

"I'll pass." he said indifferently as he tossed the file he'd been busy with aside, where it landed on top of one of the two stacks he'd already completely. They were meant to be collected by some demon or other and routed to their assignees, but he wasn't sure when that would happen. He also didn't care, not his problem. He got up then, uncrossing his legs at the same time in one fluid motion and announcing, "I'm leaving."

Eric stood up straighter and pushed the door open wide, shuffling aside out of the doorway,

"Yes, Lor- I mean, Crowley." he managed to catch himself.

Crowley ignored him as he grabbed his jacket off one of the sharp jutting bones of the thrown chair's headrest, pulling it on over his black leather wasitcoat and henley. He grabbed his glasses next, where they'd also been hanging on a bone piece and once he had them on, eyes concealed, he glanced at the other two demons, noticing the questioning, insistent eye contact going on between Eric and Furfur. Like two brats trying to egg the other on to ask permission to do something. He tried to ignore them, taking in a silent, forcibly patient breath as he straightened his jacket collar, but he wasn't quick enough to leave before Furfur cleared his throat and started to ask,

"Uh, Crowley, can I-?

"Nngh, I don't care, just shut up and get out." he said in exasperation as he waved a dismissive hand from Furfur to the door. Furfur didn't linger, him and Eric were running off like excited kids three seconds later, leaving Crowley to peacefully exit after them.

He sashayed his way out into the hall and walked through the lessor crowd of demons going about. They mostly moved out of his way, with the slower, lumbering ones brushing against him as he made his way to the nearest exit, the one through which he'd entered five days earlier and would bring him up near to where he'd parked the Bentley. It was one of his preferred entrance/exits of Hell, because it happened to be near a 'dive bar' in Victoria that he personally favoured. A pub that was never too crowded, it was dimly lit, had far apart seating and no one ever noticed when he changed the music to suit himself.

Aways down the hall, he turned out of the slowly moving traffic of demons into a different narrower corridor, at the end of which was a door with a glowing red EXIT sign above it. He approached the door, grabbed the grimy handle and roughly pulled it to swing open before stepping through. The transporter through the doors was similar to an escalator, which was better than stairs and less crowded than both the big and small lifts. It was also slower, but the eight minute upward ascension gave Crowley time to clean himself up with a few flicks and snaps of his fingers. By the time he was nearing the hatchway to Earth, he was completely clean of Hell's grime and stink. Crowley took a moment to observe his clean fingernails and then ran his hands over the sides of his hair just as the transporter reached the top and a hatchway materialized in the green-black smog before him. He shoved it open, stepping up and out into a narrow alleyway between two buildings, taking in a deep inhale of the smell of London as he let the hatch drop closed loudly behind him. Rolling his head from side to side and flexing his hands, Crowley instantly felt better and after another moment of reorienting himself to Earth, he glanced up at the narrow view of dark sky he could see. It was obviously late, but he checked his watch just to be exact, seeing it was almost 9 PM.

He started walking to the exit of the alley then, making a face and mumbling,

"Way too long." as he thought of the fact he'd been in Hell for so many days.

He walked out onto the relatively busy sidewalk with steady strides and then continued directly across the street, absently navigating the evening traffic as he made his way to where his car was, still exactly where he'd parked it. Always pleased to see his Bentley, Crowley ran his fingers along the side as he walked up to the driver side door, cooing,

"Hello, my darling." with a small smirk before pulling the door open, having slipped his car keys out of his pocket at the same time. He got in and immediately started the car up, and as per usual the radio came on and music loudly filled the space of the car; halfway through the first bridge of the song Take Me To Church by Hozier. Crowley relaxed into his seat and took in a deep breath as he let the music wash over him, listening to the lyrics of the song as they settled into his mind and gently stoked his emotions.

That was one thing that had changed for him over the past few years. While he'd developed a hatred for love songs in those first six or so months after Aziraphale left him, he'd long since embraced humankind's penchant for emotionally provocative music. Before he'd simply listened to music for entertainment, and he'd also known it could be great for atmosphere from watching movies and other human media. But only since he'd 'fallen' that second time, and only after he'd given love songs a chance and properly listened to them, did he discover that whether the song lyrics were sad or happy or somewhere in between, many of them were very relatable, which made listening to them quite cathartic, as well as helped him to understand his own feelings in some ways.

So, he'd chosen to do as humans did in love, he used music to understand and internally express his feelings, and it'd worked. It'd been working ever since. He still drank a lot, but he also processed more and embraced more readily the fact that he could feel love, as it existed in him as a demon, buried and intended to remain dormant and unused. It'd always been there though, and it was still real and as powerful as it had ever been in his forgettable time as an angel. In fact, his love felt stronger now, which was probably the reason that falling for Aziraphale and being let down by the angel hurt far more than falling from Heaven and being let down by God ever had.

Having fully accepted that he fell in love with Aziraphale a very, very, very long time ago, he also eventually came to accept that Aziraphale likely did, or had, loved him, but had probably never been in love with him, which was vastly different. So vastly different. Accepting that fact had made the days easier, had made getting on with 'life' easier. He still loved Aziraphale, he knew he always would, it was a feeling that ran deeper than any pit of Hell and ascended higher than any height in Heaven. It was a part of who he was, a part of what had shaped him over the millennia; Aziraphale was. Of course, accepting all of that meant accepting Aziraphale's choice to go back to Heaven. It still hurt to accept, any and every time he thought about it, and even sometimes when he wasn't actively thinking about it, but that's just the way it was. At least Crowley knew the angel was safe up there, not getting into any trouble...probably.

He sighed softly, thinking about how often Aziraphale got himself into 'dangerous' situations. Well, now he was officially in charge of Heaven and the only one who was a danger to him was God herself, and by extension, the Metatron. He wasn't much better off with how he was in almost the exact same position on the rival side, with Luci-, uh, Satan being the one he had to ultimately answer to. Lucifer. He had to stop thinking of Satan as Lucifer. He wasn't 'Lucifer' any more than Crowley was the angel he used to be.

As his thoughts filtered to angels and demons and the pointlessness of it all, he became aware of the silence in the idling car. He'd been staring unseeing out of the windscreen, but when he noticed the song had ended, he looked at the stereo and realized that the car was waiting for him to choose the next song from his playlist. He had started compiling a playlist at the end of that first year without Aziraphale, which to date had well over one hundred songs. When driving, he usually chose the music himself, he thought it and it played, but right then he wasn't really up to choosing, so, warily he said to the Bentley,

"I'm going to give you another chance to pick a song," the idling car rumbled a bit louder, "but it has to be from my playlist." he warned, "If you pull anything like you did last time, I swear I'll trade you in for one of those Mulliners." which he never would, but the rumbling engine died down a bit which meant his disapproval was understood. He couldn't have another incident of the Bentley deciding to blast Beyonce's, Halo, from his car as he was driving down one of London's main streets. The idea alone made him cringe to high Hell. He had no idea when his classic car had developed a taste for modern pop music, but he'd discovered it in the most embarrassing way. He'd been so shocked, he'd almost driven clean across the lanes of traffic.

When the music started up in the car with loud, whisperingly eerie vocals, Crowley wasn't surprised that it was one of the few modern songs on his playlist, which was a pop song, but the dark alternative kind. He was not disappointed with the Bentley's choice, Cursed by Ari Abdul was actually quite fitting to his mood. Sitting up straighter then, he set one hand on the steering and one on the gear shift and put his foot flat down on the accelerator, the engine rumbling loudly and his tires skidding before he shifted gears and the car pulled forward, peeling away from the curb into the traffic at an unnatural and unsafe speed.

The pub wasn't far, and there were several bottles of Talisker waiting there with his name on them.

---

A fair distance away in Mayfair, Aziraphale was still waiting, sitting on a wall partition outside Crowley's apartment building, filled with dread and hopelessness with still no sign of the demon as the end of the day drew nearer...

...but he stood up suddenly when his extended senses finally picked up something! There'd been a flash of unfamiliar demonic energy, but Aziraphale was still so in tune with Crowley's demonic signature he'd been able to sense the underlying flare of it within the bigger flash. He didn't know what to make of that, but it hardly mattered right then, all that mattered was that he'd just confirmed Crowley was still in London, and not even that far away!

He started walking in the direction he'd felt the flare almost without thought, keeping his senses extended, hoping for another flare, something he could latch onto-

"...!" he smiled, breathing out shakily in relief when he felt it the moment Crowley's car was started up, because Crowley's car was an extension of the demon himself and it had the same demonic signature!

Aziraphale took in a few heavier breaths as his heart raced, hope, along with panic born of urgency, both rising rapidly as he glanced around the quiet square surrounded by apartment buildings. He knew he couldn't lose that signal, which would probably only be detectable for however long Crowley was in his car. Not willing to risk not feeling another spike of the demon's energy before he absolutely had to return to Heaven, Aziraphale rushed toward the road and took the risk of a small miracle to urge the nearest black cab in the area to come his way, expecting that at such a busy hour, and with the amount of black cabs in London, one would come along very quickly.

True enough, he waited only about a minute before a cab turned the corner into the street he was standing on and he immediately put his hand out to hail it. After all, directing a nearby cab to a street he was standing in and miracling himself a £20 note was minor when compared to miracling himself all the way to Crowley.

Once in the cab Aziraphale had to use his knowledge of London to guess more or less where Crowley was by his demonic signature and hoping he was getting it right, he told the driver to drive toward Victoria.

---

The pub was just over a mile away, so at the speed he drove Crowley was abruptly screeching to a halt along the curb mere minutes later. He turned off the engine, and with sharp movements he got out of the car and snapped the door shut after himself, before walking through the faint smoke rising from his tires. As he rounded the front of the Bentley and stepped into the street, he snapped his fingers to make sure his car would remain where he left it, come Hell or high water, or even bloody Heaven, and then he was crossing the street and heading toward the entrance of the pub, keen on getting a drink after almost five days without any whiskey.

---

Aziraphale immediately frowned when he lost the steady signal of Crowley's car, but even though he hadn't yet pinpointed Crowley's exact location, he felt confident that the demon was still somewhere in the Victoria area, because despite how fast he drove, the car hadn't even been running for ten minutes.

The cab Aziraphale was in was just a few minutes from being in the Victoria area, and he decided he'd keep his senses out, because as long as the Bentley didn't start up again any time soon, driving around the Victoria area meant he was bound to pick up Crowley's actual signature the moment they were in close enough proximity. He'd probably need to miracle up some more money for the cab, but that would be perfectly fine if it meant finding Crowley.

Smiling but tense in the back seat of the cab, Aziraphale started to wring his hands as he kept his senses sharp for even the slightest flicker of Crowley.

---

Inside the pub, Crowley was sitting in his preferred spot; at a high pub table along the wall which was located away from the thoroughfare of the pub but still close enough to wave to the bartender when he needed to. He'd been there for about a half hour, was a quarter way into his first bottle of Talisker and he was already feeling much better, especially as he knocked back another double shot. He'd already changed the music to something mellow, a song on his personal playlist called Fade Into You by Mazzy Star. He'd even adjusted the volume to a nicely audible level and as usual no one noticed, or if they did, they didn't care to wonder who'd changed it or how it'd been changed, they just went with it.

It was about as perfect as things could get for him these days, relaxing in a busy place by himself, alone without being alone. Humans serving as white noise beneath music he liked to listen to, music that got under his skin in just the right way.

He was sitting sideways on a high stool, legs extended and crossed over at the ankle so his booted feet could balance on the footrest of another stool while he slouched with his back against the wall. He'd just poured himself another double shot and he was very happy to let the alcohol and music continue to help him with processing and coping with his feelings. This was fine, he was fine...

...right up until he wasn't anymore.

Because it was one thing to wallow in his love problems by himself, but when the one he was wallowing over walked right up to his pub table and stood before him, the source of his pain suddenly right there after being gone for three years, Crowley was instantly the farthest possible fucking thing from being fine.

He wasn't drunk yet either, and the slightest reach of his senses confirmed that he was looking at the real thing. The real angel. The real Aziraphale.

Crowley was stiff with tension, eyes wide behind his glasses as he stared at Aziraphale, Aziraphale who was somehow standing right there. Standing there and looking at him...looking at him with hopeful, bright, pretty blue eyes, which the dim lighting of the pub did nothing to detract from. Same went for the pale flicks and curls of his short white-blond hair, and his smile, which was small but equally hopeful and always so infectious. And, and curling up just so at the corners of his mouth, his lips, his lips, pinkish and...soft, Crowley recalled, Aziraphale's lips had been soft .

Those very same lips which parted right then for the angel to say,

"Crowley." in his lovely, lovely voice.

No. Nonononononononononono.

Aziraphale flinched in surprise when the speakers throughout the pub screeched out ear-aching feedback before the main electrical socket blew out, sparking and frizzling and taking the rest of the lights out with it, making people yell out in surprise and concern as the whole place went dark. But Crowley, yellow eyes glowing behind his glasses as he glared into Aziraphale's concerned blue gaze, could see just fine, and when he stood up from the stool sharply and it fell over, prompting more yelps amidst the worried chatter and phone flashlights of the humans, he didn't give a shit.

He felt livid. He was furious that Aziraphale would do this to him, would just show up, fucking smiling!

He shoved the other stool aside, out of his way, and it fell over as well as he took a step forward, right into Aziraphale's personal space. And he felt even angrier when Aziraphale didn't step back, when the angel just tipped his head back to look up at him, maintaining eye contact and looking round eyed and apologetic and- damn it all! The humans were shining their phone lights on the pair of them, and he couldn't handle that right then. Emotional turmoil was threatening to take over and if he didn't get out he was going to lose his temper in the way only Aziraphale could make happen, and in such close quarters, the humans would definitely get hurt.

Sucking in air through his clenched and bared teeth, Crowley said,

"NO." loudly and firmly right in Aziraphale's face, not caring that literally everyone in the pub was staring at them under the concentrated light of multiple phone torches. All staring at him breathing heavily and seething as he glared down at Aziraphale, who for all intents and purposes looked harmless and kind and sweet and lovely and worried and sorry, he looked sorry and regretful, but they had no idea-

"Crowley, ple-" he tried again, but Crowley said,

"NO." again, louder, angrier, then, "I'm not doing this. You go back to where you came from." before he walked away, careful not to bump into Aziraphale, not to touch him at all, before he was stalking through the parting crowd of people and lights toward the exit and out of the pub.

He heard,

"Crowley, wait, please!" in a pained voice.

It hurt him even more to hear that voice pleading those words, but he ignored it, he had to.

He simply could not get away fast enough, so the second he stepped out of the pub doors, out of the sight of any one around, Crowley snapped his fingers and miracled himself into the driver's seat of the Bentley. Then he miracled the car on, grabbed the steering wheel and put his foot down, tires squealing and engine rumbling loudly as he pulled away from the curb.

And he had no idea whether it was his own subconscious underneath his anger and shock, or the Bentley reading his mood, but Queen's, I Want To Break Free blared out of his speakers as he peeled away. Because even though he didn't look to check, he was painfully aware that Aziraphale had exited the pub and was standing on the curb, watching him drive away.

It was a pitiful dig, but it was all he could do...

...because he was pitiful, and he was running away like a coward.

---

Crowley floored it back to his flat like a bat out of Hell, or more accurately, a demon out of Hell. If the traffic had been heavier he may very well have had an accident, but he was so angry and unsettled that he didn't care. The generally fifteen-minute drive from Victoria to Mayfair took him around six minutes, and after he'd hastily parked off the Bentley he walked with heavy but quick steps into his building. By that time, he was exhaling small puffs of smoke and working his jaw and swallowing around a lump in his throat, ignoring the burn in the back of his nose and wetness threatening at the corners of his eyes, all that with the feeling of confused anguish to top it off.

"Why, whywhywhy..." he gritted out once he was alone in the elevator, clenching and unclenching his fists and hating that all the shitty feelings he'd thought he'd gotten a hold on were all gushing out at once, making his empty human stomach turn over nauseatingly with the minimal alcohol he'd just consumed. He didn't know why Aziraphale had shown up all of a sudden and he had no idea what he was going to do. He didn't even know if there was any point in running away, or if he really even wanted to run. Come tomorrow, if Aziraphale was gone again, would he regret having run from the love of his existence ? Running had seemed like a good idea at the time.

When the elevator arrived on his floor, Crowley agitatedly walked out and once he reached his flat door, he took a moment to distract himself by searching for his keys in his pocket, all the while breathing deeply in and out through his nose –why did it seem to work for humans?- as he made the effort to use his key to open the door normally. After jamming the key into the lock and opening the door, he stepped inside and immediately shut it again. Then he stood for a moment with his hand pressed to it, continuing to steady his breathing, still processing...until he felt just a little calmer, at which time he sighed out a long smokey breath and relaxed marginally.

Slowly, Crowley slid his hand down the dark wood before moving away from the door, carelessly tossing the key onto a decorative table as he turned around to walk through the entrance hall. His mouth was pulled in a tense grimace as he reached up one hand to pull his glasses off his face, while using the other to push open the ajar door to his throne room. But he'd barely taken two steps in when he looked up and froze, breathing forgotten and mouth and fingers going slack from shock, the latter action causing his glasses to fall and clatter on the tiled floor, because Crowley found himself once again looking at Aziraphale, standing right there in his flat...