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Modern music wasn’t really his thing.
It wasn’t that Crowley was picky. He was, when it came to certain topics, of course. But that was just about as true for him as it was for any living thing, or being. Everyone has a taste, whether it be for food, or for beverages. For people, or for colours, or for songs.
As far as genres went, Crowley preferred rock. Not so much metal, or indie songs. Or musicals, though a few comments had been slyly sent his way about that. There was only one style that he had deemed tasteful.
He also liked classical. Though he would never admit that, never in a hundred more years.
He could feel the concern puttering deep within the Bentley, wondering why he was so quiet, so downtrodden and dispassionate all of the sudden, ever since a week or so previous. The plants in the back still remained there, fed by the sheets of light that filtered through the well-kept windows and the water that Crowley never forgot to provide to them. Besides that, they still feared his rage, his fury if they ever dared to falter, and allow a blemish to show through on their leaves.
It was maybe ten at night, nearing the brink of halfway to eleven. As usual, he hadn’t changed, hadn’t eaten. He didn’t need to, nor did he care to try. It was a waste of time, spent on the grime and soot that only human bodies could contract. If he even managed a small stain, he could just miracle it away. He wasn’t going to wash his hands again.
He had opened the door to his flat, let the thing swing on its hinges, not even bothering to fling it ajar hard enough for it to slam against the nearest wall, falling victim to his rage. Instead, Crowley stepped inside, arms clutching the boxes of plants, and dragged himself along silently.
Not after the day he had gone home.
Setting one box down, he fumbled, and sent soil spraying across the front of his shirt and hands. It was only a splash of it, sent shooting up at the sudden thud of the box against the ground, but Crowley’s shirt was soiled. He groaned, quietly, at a much more dampened volume than his usual frustration would elicit.
He stood, abandoning the open door and the nervous vegetation, and beelined for the washroom.
It had been far too long since he’d been utterly alone. For the past three, maybe four, years, he’d spent his hours talking, laughing, drinking, with—
Crowley flicked on the faucet, barely watching as the water ran out, ice cold. He briefly examined the damage done to his top, only dirtied by the spilled soil. It was minimal, but it would be foolish to wash first. If he mussed with the grime on the shirt with his equally filthy, if not filthier, hands, it’d only get sootier, more unkempt.
Though the few years he’d spent continuously mingling with the angel had been incomparable to the millennias he’d spent existing altogether, their comforting, familiar absence still left a gaping hole in his chest. Time was precious, he supposed. That thought alone set him apart from the others. Well, all except for…
Making a sort of noise of disdain, Crowley stuck his hands in under the stream of cold water. It didn’t phase him, the icy shock of it. He was long well-acclimated with extreme temperatures, and changes in it, besides.
He scrubbed at the dirt.
How odd, how some people are there for so little time, consistently. Seldom constant. And yet, they can shift such a drastic lens onto our lives. How do they manage to do that, to hold our hearts and hopes so dearly, for the minute amount of time they’d actually been around?
As he washed, the water began to warm itself up. The tap hadn’t been used, he assumed, for years. Shax had only used the damn flat as leverage, really. She never slept, never ate. Hell, she’d likely only seen the inside of the place enough times to count on one hand.
Sometimes, forever is a mindset.
There was a tingle, maybe an itch, that began to wriggle at the back of the demon’s mind, at the base of his skull where the neck conjoined with the head. He ignored it. It was likely unimportant, a demon nearby or something. A sense that was misplaced, even if this feeling had never occurred when another occult being was around, in his radius. Must have been.
The worst part of being alone, is being alone with your thoughts. The only thing close enough to comfort us, when everyone else is far away. Like the woozy thoughts that flood in before you die helplessly, visions and hallucinations so that we think everything’s going to be okay, in the end.
A voice. A music-less, tone-lacking, voice, that said the words silently.
No matter how much you like being alone, the silence will one day swallow you.
“If only this was holy water,” the voice said.
Crowley leapt back with a hiss, spraying water everywhere. His hands, now shaking, dripped with scalding hot water, falling to the floor in disarrayed ‘plip’s against the cool, dark flooring.
His chest had heaved with rattled gasps, uneven breathing that was desperately trying to settle his imbalanced, shaken corporeal form. The thought itself hadn’t startled him, an almost-constant gnawing at the back of his darkened mind. It had been the water, he assured himself. A misfortunate spike in temperature, so sudden it had collided with his ever-irritating thoughts.
He made an effort to stifle the gasping, a wet sound with his mouth that came out more pathetic than commanding. A sharp smack of his lame tongue against the roof of it, jaw half-shutting and falling back open again at his loss of words. Of actions.
Crowley watched the running water pour out and pool in the sink, running aimlessly and determinedly into the drain. Swirling down unwittingly, like it had a purpose to fulfil; one it didn’t question. And, by— by anything, Crowley wished he could have been the same way.
It was so sickening, the thought. So oxymoronic, for he hated Heaven, and yearned for the approval of God all at once. Teeth against teeth, Crowley sucked in shallow breaths.
“Shit,” he cursed weakly. But he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t blame the flinch on anyone but himself.
Because the voice had been his own.
He remembered that day, though he acted like it hadn’t happened. As far as he was concerned, he’d never gone back to his flat. His plants were still in the back of the car, and his clothes were as miraculously clean as they had always been.
Crowley gathered the leafy boxes hastily, with nothing more than gritted teeth. He straightened up, hefting the plants, and casting one last — unintentional — gaze at the vault he kept so wisely hidden.
Then he ground his jaw, and turned on his heel, shutting the door harshly behind him.
The Bentley creaked, not with age, but with worry. A question, the best way it could manage. Crowley never drove the speed limit, much less under it. Something must have been really, truly off, what with the demon’s casual lead-footed tendencies.
It was a wonder to Crowley himself that he was dismal enough to drive the speed limit. Though he was glowering, he didn’t have the heart to trouble the Bentley. He pressed a foot gently to the gas, if only to console the car.
Satisfied by the reassurance, the radio crackled to life gingerly, testing the waters of the demon’s temper.
Mama… life had just begun~
Crowley shot a reflexive glare at the dash. “Aye, you, knock it off.” He murmured. “You know how Beelzebub gets about that one.”
The Bentley’s radio crackled again, the volume on the song ebbing, but not dying out. It seemed to still be insistent upon wheedling any sort of reaction out of Crowley.
The demon sighed, a growl cracking through it in a customary way, but he said nothing.
Cranking the wheel, he turned right, parting from the bustling city of London to a flatter terrain, peppered with trees and shoots of grass. Eventually, they began to veer sweetly into the rolling hills and cobbled streets. The overwhelming scent of dusk-fettered pine slipped in through the lowered windows, and sunk deeply, like a cologne, into Crowley’s carnal lungs.
The rumbling of the car droned on, providing the demon with a wonderful, makeshift white noise. He almost didn’t catch the way the song edged closer to the end.
When he did, he slapped the radio, firmly but not harshly. “Alright, that’s enough.”
Oh, mamma mia, mamma— The song fizzled out.
He exhaled in relief. Even though Gabriel and Beelzebub had darted off to wherever they’d gone, Crowley couldn’t help the wince of panic that shot through his chest. He didn’t want the duke popping in for a quick snicker again, now did he?
Where had they gone again, Crowley wondered? Somewhere to elope, he supposed. Certainly not on Earth, no, they’d be hunted down and erased by the archangels of Heaven. With his left foot, free and never prepped on the brake, he toed the floor of the Bentley absently. He’d never minded Beelzebub, really, though they were a tad bossy. It was their nature, he supposed, being a Sin and all. He just didn’t like anyone all that much, not even the other demons. They were all so preoccupied with evil deeds, rather than just being aloof. For the same reason, they’d never been fond of Crowley. Could never appreciate his hard work: making the stars. Demons never gave a rat’s arse about rare beauty.
Oh, that’s right. The bureaucrats had run off to Alpha Centauri, hadn’t they?
“Go off… together?”
Crowley’s breath hitched at the memory, cold and lonesome. Satan, he hated thinking sometimes. He bore down on his bottom lip, pressing into it with his canines, testing the durability of the pinkened skin there. With much effort, he forced the active thoughts out of his head.
Up a hill, they went, bumbling on as they pressed upwards against the strain of gravity. The slow incline of this odd place they were headed only gave both the plants and the car time to contemplate the possible fit of madness that Crowley had fallen into. Wouldn’t have been the first time.
At last, he shunted his foot on the brake, the Bentley screeching to a halt. The silence, and the pure emptiness, hung in the air, still and quiet. The sun had long set, slunk beneath the rolling fields and the beautiful sight that surrounded the demon. He drew in a deep breath, and turned to the backseat, rummaging for a moment. When he finally did make a noise of confirmation, he rose, with a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and no cups or additives in the other.
Crowley paused as he fumbled with the handle, glancing to the plants from behind his shades. “Be right back,” he murmured, and kicked open the door.
It was incredibly informal, drinking straight whiskey from the bottle. One would expect, from such a refined demon such as himself, that Crowley would at least put the effort in to fix himself an Old Fashioned, or a Manhattan, at the very least. Even he had been known to enjoy a Paper Plane once in a while. But lo, the demon was feeling much too cursory to care, gulping down swig by swig of booze on the roof of the Bentley. The purpling sky blanketed him pleasantly, as if it could veil the incessant gaze of God Herself. But of course, it couldn’t, and Crowley’s inebriation was on full display.
Flat on his back, the buzzing thoughts had swarmed like bees in his head again. They were so annoying, so incredibly vexatious, that the demon actually groaned out loud in frustration. Leave me alone, he thought, a frown furrowed deep on his lips. He rocked to the side to throw his arm over the side of the roof.
“Oi,” he grumbled, swinging a lazy arm off of the right side of the car. “Play something, dammit.”
It took a moment before the Bentley realised that the demon had been talking to it, to which it hastily sputtered to life. The radio sprang to life, and with it, a song.
Can… anybody find me somebody to love?
Crowley groaned, and brought a heel down against the roof, shaking his head.
Ooh, each morning I get up I die a little
He stuttered drunkenly, unable to form a coherent order. “No, jus’—”
Can barely stand on my feet
“No,” he smacked his palm against the car, causing the music to trail off into quiet with a ‘take a look at yourself…’
He sighed, halfway between that and a grumble. “‘M not in the mood for Queen,” he scolded, words slurring.
The Bentley seemed befuddled with the very notion of that. Crowley was almost never ‘not in the mood’ for some good ol’ Freddie Mercury. He’d spent the late seventies and the early eighties lounging like a ginger cat around the man, for Heaven’s sake.
With a contemplating pause, the car kicked up again with a different song, track rewinding.
Sometimes I feel so happy
Crowley froze, lips parted just so to show off his pearly teeth.
Sometimes I feel so sad
The demon moaned in his intoxicated sorrow again, and the car cut off the song immediately. It sat, in silence, for a moment.
“Why even try with you,” Crowley murmured, quite hurtfully, the Bentley would add.
A miffed sort of sheepishness pulsed through the car for a moment, frustrated with his stubbornness. So, without thinking — though if it could think was debatable, being a car and all — the Bentley put on a different song. One Crowley’d never heard before.
It started with a radiant hum, a swell of electric music. He furrowed his brows in his slowed perplexity, sluggish with the taint of alcohol. He drained a sip of whiskey past his lips once more, waiting for more of the song to play.
I glow pink in the night in my room
The song was slow, oddly paced. But a single thought rang out in Crowley’s head. Modern.
I’ve been blossoming alone over you
He swallowed the sip, exhaled and opened his mouth to speak.
And I feel my heart breaking tonight
But for some reason, he hesitated. Not a full stop, not just yet, but a rest. Like a dancer, poised on her toes, waiting for the sweetness of the orchestra to begin in a harmonious swell.
I feel my heart breaking tonight
Do you feel it too?
He waited.
It’s like, a summer shower…
Crowley’s hand clutched more loosely on the neck of the bottle. Tediously, he lifted the bottle to his lips. He let the tentative air surround him.
With every drop of rain, singing
He drank.
I love you, I love you, I love you~
Crowley could feel the rising tension of the words. Those words he had never said, not once, aloud.
I love you, I love you, I love you
But, oh, had he thought them a million times over. He could count the years they’d touched his tongue, and melted like sweets. 4004 B.C, 41 A.D, 1601…
I love you, I love you
1793, 1809, 1941, 1967…
I love you…
- 2012.
The thought had crossed his mind endlessly, from then on. No particular reason, of course, he told himself.
He felt his breathing begin weigh down his chest like an anchor. Clearing his throat — which had grown increasingly clogged, for some reason — he shifted to a sort of half-horizontal, propped-chest position. His eyes searched the periwinkle skies, which were fading into a nice, plum colour.
The stars he’d shaped himself were scattered across the canvas in a spurling dance, flecked here, and now there. Pride swam in his throat at the thought of such beauties, with their special ability to linger, even after death.
How long had it been, again? Six-thousand years, since the day he’d crafted those pretty luminaries? Fumbling with the scroll, ignored by all the other so-called merciful beings.
All except for one.
Crowley shifted again.
I could stare at your back all day
It wasn’t fair, really. That it was so easy to feel that way, and yet so hard to express it aloud.
He had spent years, decades, centuries, watching things when they weren’t looking. Very few times had he admired such things. Ducks, clever children, artists with passions for their works of all kinds. An angel.
Crowley had spent thousands of years staring at someone who had always turned to look him in the eye. In his lambent, yellow eyes of which he had grown minutely fond. Even through the dark safety of the glasses, the angel had always seen right through them, sometimes too deeply through, all the way to his damned, divine soul. He could feel the way it would tremble— not in fear, but worse: longing. A want. A need.
I could stare at your back all day…
Crowley desperately drained the rest of the liquor, letting it slide down his throat like a corrosive comfort. It healed the wounds he kept on making, while he choked down his emotions, and kept his words proper. A drop of the whiskey ran down his chin, from the corner of his ravenously-working mouth. His tongue darted out to retrieve it, lick any sort of inebriation into his system. He needed to be intoxicated. Crowley needed to forget.
Forever is a mindset.
“Oh, Crowley. Nothing—”
Crowley tipped the empty bottle back, praying— cursing that maybe, just maybe, there was something left in the glassware. But it was just as barren as he had made it. It was his fault, after all.
He made a sort of exasperated noise, but held himself together. The pressure pushed at the seams, strained at the stitches. He would hold, he just needed to ground himself.
Tongue against ivory teeth, Crowley hissed inwardly. When the world grew too confusing, he drank. When he needed some solid, righteous fun, he drank. When he was mourning, he drank himself so high off of his tits he’d collapse face-first into whatever was in front of him. He hadn’t been so inebriated since Armageddon, and before that, the busy night in the bookshop. And before that… well, actually, all the way back in 1827.
The funniest thing was, he always seemed to be getting utterly smashed over, or with, the angel. He’d always been around to take care of him when he was insensible. Or he wasn’t, and Crowley would be drinking to numb himself entirely.
To be perfectly honest: that last part had never worked. Not once.
But it hadn’t ever stopped him before. It wasn’t going to now.
Crowley moaned despairingly again, flopping down in a surrendering manner against the car, flat on his back. He rolled to his side, and curled a knee upwards in invisible pain.
And I know I’ve kissed you before
Something in Crowley’s already-chilly blood went cold, like puddled rain water turning to ice in the cracks of the pavement. He felt all of his stirred thoughts still in a single moment, as if a pin had dropped, and the silence lingered on.
But—
His gaze hovered intently on one spot in the air, fixed on nothing and everything at once.
“You idiot,” Crowley had said, voice breaking. “We could’ve been…”
The angel had looked crestfallen. Not heartbroken, yet.
“Us.”
Crowley felt something recoil in his throat; bunch back like a rearing, slavering head preparing to strike. He sucked in a gasp, as silently as he could. It didn’t matter. He was alone. No one would hear him, would come for him, even if he’d screamed.
I didn’t do it right
Something bit at the corners of his eyes. He rolled onto his back once more, the glasses falling to the side as he did so, and he strained to keep everything inside. He had done it since the beginning of time, he could do it forever.
“Nothing lasts forever.”
The dam shook, threatening to collapse. To break, to spill forth every bit of hurt there had ever been. But he held together. He had to compose himself.
Can I try again?
Suddenly, his fists were balled in starched lapels, handling them roughly, desperately. He was clutching the angel closely, hoping that he could convey, in one beating moment, everything he’d been keeping inside for six millennia.
There was a gasp against his lips, but Crowley held his place. He didn’t dare move, or sway, into or away from the kiss. He wasn’t doing this out of love, no, though he had so much of it boiling inside of him for the angel. Stay, he thought into the kiss. Don’t go.
Try again
His mind kept playing the name on loop. The softness of his lips was dizzying, a miracle in itself. Behind his sunglasses, Crowley felt tears slipping, falling, gliding down into the hidden depths of the shades. He was thankful for them, more than ever.
It was then that the angel had pushed back, into the kiss. Something jumped in Crowley’s chest at the movement; he was kissing back. Crying the same exact way that Crowley was: despondent, and wanting. There was want in his touch, and the demon could feel it. He intended to cling to it, like a leech to its host. Not harming, just needing.
Try again?
It was so messy. Especially for a first kiss, by God. Holding back the clash of teeth, planted perfectly on each other’s mouths, too dry and much too ravenous. Their lips hadn’t been working hungrily, and their tongues hadn’t even moved from their lame spots in their mouths, like stones that served no purpose but to sit there. It was far from perfect.
But the worst part was that it was good. So, so good. Physically pleasant.
Try again,
Their emotions were what ruined it. It was tainted with desperation, and disconsolate grief. Drenched in the stench of failed romance.
And again,
Crowley had hated it.
He had breathed into it, punitively so with his frustration. He choked back the sobs that threatened to crawl up his throat, and weep into the angel’s. He didn’t want the angel to see him cry, then.
And again?
And then, for a miraculous and euphoric moment, the angel raised his arms, and held him. It was a single, beautiful moment — perhaps even better than the creation of the stars. They were wrapped together, closely twined, like two vines. A serpent, and one more divine, coiled together; the purer with warm blood. They were one, at once, and nothing else.
And then, the world reappeared.
And again,
The moment was gone at the snap of two fingers, as the angel let his hands uncurl from Crowley’s back, and drop. The pulse he could feel hammering through his chest and into the other’s fell cold again, and Crowley pushed away.
The angel had not. He instead, fell back, and cried.
And again,
Weeping, stuttering. The sounds were all too loud for Crowley’s ears.
And then, Aziraphale spoke, a near-whisper.
“I forgive you.”
Every spinning thing around them, in a blur of colours, slowed, and came to a stop. Crowley could hear himself breathe, and wished that he simply wouldn’t, anymore. The tears pooled in the bottom of his glasses.
And again…
“Don’t bother.”
A loud sob tore itself from Crowley’s weighted chest, choking at the pain. Then another, and another, and soon, the demon was falling apart. Atop the Bentley, blanketed by the horrific lonesomeness of the dotted sky. No one came at his cries, as no one had ever done. But this time, it was worse.
Losing someone is one thing. But knowing that, somewhere, someone is unreachable. That they simply do not want to see you, and chose a place that had wrought misery upon you both over you, and the love you’d professed for them.
Aziraphale was gone, just because Crowley would not go with him.
Crowley wept. It was ugly, and doleful, and he would have shut himself up if he could have. But he couldn’t; crying with his teeth tightly shut and his hands, trembling, clutching at his bare eyes. The slip of his hot tears against his palms was sickening, and he cried harder.
Goddamn it, Aziraphale, he thought. But he wasn’t angry with him.
“Forgive me,” he said, voice broken with his sobs. “I’ll take one more bloody forgiveness over your silence.”
He writhed, eyes snapping open at the empty, cloudless sky. A pang struck his chest, sour and hurtful.
“Say something, dammit!” Whether he was speaking to the angel, or to God, it wasn’t clear. Sobs wracked him violently, as his strength began to leech away.
“Please.”
And the sky — God, Aziraphale — said nothing.