Chapter Text
He'd been driving around London for hours and now, as the Bentley began to make faint sounds of protest, he cursed himself for more reasons than he could count. How could he have let Aziraphale leave? Why did he make that whole damned speech to someone who had clearly already made up his mind? What had made him think for even a second that the angel, his angel , would stay?
It’s what he’d convinced himself thousands of times over the six millenia he had been hopelessly pining over his only friend, the only person in the legions of angels, and demons, and whatever meaningless hierarchy everyone expected him to believe in, and it was that someone like Aziraphale, so kind, so eternally trusting, could never really love someone like Crowley.
As he snapped out of his stupor, thoughts still racing around his head, he realised that he had subconsciously parked the car again, right outside of the bookshop. Watching out the window with a worried look on their face, Muriel motioned timidly at Crowley to come in.
He sat in there for hours, staring at the worn carpet, tears flowing endlessly down his cheeks. His body ached as sobs wracked his body again and again. He let every fated interaction with Aziraphale play through his mind on repeat, from coffee shops to the creation of the cosmos.
Every memory pierced him like a knife, emotional pain almost physical in its intensity. They were small breaks from his constant loneliness, left to the not-so-peaceful solitude of demonic intervention for hundreds of years at a time. Aziraphale had represented all of the good in Crowley, every small act that had made the pitch-black void of his conscience tilt just a little towards grey.
He realised then that Muriel was sitting on top of a pile of books in the corner of the shop, their face a combination of awkward pity and true, innocent despair. On seeing the demon’s eyes widen slightly at the sight of the young angel, they muttered an apology and hastened to find somewhere else to sit.
Crowley wanted to hate Muriel. They were what the Metatron had deemed Aziraphale’s 'replacement', in an act that made Crowley seethe with anger. Replacing Aziraphale was like trying to replace the constellations, trying to substitute Crowley's own soul, his entire being, his heart . But something was different about Muriel, with their boundless curiosity and untarnished adoration of this world. He couldn't for one second bring himself to lash out at someone so constantly altruistic. So he turned his back on them, back to his own self-loathing, replaying those final moments over and over again like a defective record.
As convinced as he had been that nothing good could ever come about from being anywhere near that angel, he was hit with a blow that felt like it had struck a fragment off from his heart, the realisation that without Aziraphale, there was nothing good.
Pacing numbly around the streets of London, he ignored the bewildered stares from passersby, completely blind to his glasses being a lone weight in his pocket. Whether they were staring at his eyes or the tears settled on his cheeks he didn't know, but he didn't care. His love for the world had been muted, silenced by the roaring rush of his mind, by every word of blame he could pin on himself. Aziraphale had been his world, and without him Crowley couldn't make himself care about anything at all.
He sat on the edge of a curb near the bookshop with a half empty bottle of whiskey, cursing his demonic body's resistance to the liquor.
Soon he was startled, suddenly feeling a hand touch his shoulder, he turned around to see Nina stood behind him, looking immensely troubled as she hastily tried to steer the intoxicated demon into the coffeeshop. Sat trembling at a table, his shoulders wrapped begrudgingly with an old tartan blanket of Nina's, he waited not-so-patiently for her to deem him 'sobered up' so he could get out of here without talking about any of his feelings with anyone. These hopes were immediately dashed as she began, apprehensively, to speak.
"Oh love, it didn't work out, did it?"