#crowley loves humans but he also loves the earth and the animals and the nebulas

[crowleave]

ok so the thing is, the kiss really was the best way crowley knew to convey his feelings to aziraphale because nina and maggie were right, they do talk but they never say what they mean.

but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand each other, at least to a certain extent.

and crowley knows aziraphale

he knows that he loves books and plays and the stories made by humanity. he watches his angel learn magic the human way and finds out he learned french the human way and knows better than anyone how much he loves human food. he throws a ball to get nina and maggie together because that’s what the humans in jane austen novels would do.

crowley knows that aziraphale romanticizes humanity, loves the drama and the stories and every little thing that makes humans human.

and what could be more human than a desperate kiss asking someone to stay

[c-is-for-circinate]

I’m so ready to be intrigued and fascinated by Raphael-as-Crowley headcanons, and I keep just not finding what I’m looking for--not because what’s out there isn’t perfectly lovely, but because none of it is quite the Crowley I want out of the story.

There’s an awful lot that focuses on all I ever did was ask questions, and I keep feeling like it loses some of the sauntered vaguely downwards.  The Crowley who didn’t fall all at once, in some great big argument or terrible trauma, but just...kept going along a certain path until it hit an inevitable conclusion he really should have seen coming and yet somehow assumed wouldn’t hit him until it did.

This is a Raphael!Crowley I’d believe:

He asks questions from the very Beginning.  Some of them, he asks to God, and They answer, or They don’t, as it suits their ineffable mood in the moment.  Some of them he asks to Michael or to Gabriel, and they have no answers, but it doesn’t bother them not to, and when Raphael goes they think on it no more.  Some of them he asks to his brightest, oldest brother, who tells him to love God and worry less, and when Raphael goes, he thinks about it all a great deal.

When the oldest, brightest archangel, the glittering Morning Star and his followers go to war against Michael and Gabriel and all the other angels, it doesn’t happen all at once.  Time doesn’t quite exist yet, not properly--things more or less happen one after the other, but how long it takes one thing to move on to the next is still very much a question.  It is both an instant and several billion years between Lucifer’s first shouted challenge and his blazing, plummeting fall to the Bottomless Pit below the depths of the Earth.

It is a war, yes, but there has never been a war before, and nobody quite knows what it means.  Raphael rolls his eyes, millions of them all fiery and blazing, and tends to every angel to cross his path injured from the spat, and invents waiting as he waits for it to be over.  He creates a handful of nebulas in an eyeblink or over the course of somebody else’s battle or in an eon.  He asks the various angels involved just what, exactly, they think they’re accomplishing here.  He asks God how long They intend for this mess to go on.  He asks Michael and Gabriel if they really think this whole invention of conflict was really The Ineffable’s best idea, really.  He asks his oldest brightest brother to come invent some new animals with him rather than sulking about the latest spat.  It’ll all blow over sooner or later.

The Morning Star Falls, but there has never been a Fall before, and still, with all the heavenly hosts assembled and all of creation poised on this moment, nobody knows what it means.

There is a Bottomless Pit in Creation now, and nobody can remember the first and brightest archangel’s name.  They know he was Lucifer the bright-shining one, but his true name, the divine one that held the Name of God within it, is lost from all time and space and knowledge.  He is not an angel any more.  He is a new thing now, a thing called a demon, that nobody has ever seen before and nobody entirely understands.  Just as he was the very first of all the angels, he is the first of these new demon-things.  He is not the last.

The angels that fought at Lucifer’s side plummet down one by one to join him, with grand dramatic declarations and enormous swan-dives into pain and fire.  The angels that fought against them watch in wonderment.  There aren’t exactly rules yet, about Heaven and Hell, with Hell only just starting to exist for the very first time ever.  The war might be over, or it might still be going on.  Heaven invents another brand new thing called a wall, and with it a gate, which is a way of passing through a wall, and angels and demons both use it with caution and confusion.

Raphael visits both sides, and tends to wounds, and asks questions.

He asks, when can Lucifer come back home?  He asks, why did you have to push Them so hard and bring this upon yourself, anyway?  He asks, why did you let all this business go on so long in the first place?  He asks, did you know what They would do to you?  He asks, did we really need to go through all this trouble just to invent this ‘wall’ thing?

He asks, If you didn’t want me going out there and coming back in, why did you invent a gate?

It isn’t entirely a surprise when the-thing-that-was-once-the-archangel-Raphael returns to the Gates of Heaven to find them locked and barred against him.  It is only mostly a surprise.  It is a feeling he couldn’t describe to any other angel, who stands on the entire Universe as their own solid ground, or any other demon, who has plummeted down the entire length of said Universe in one fast Fall.  A human sometime in the future might be able to relate to the sensation of tripping somewhere in the middle of a staircase, the sudden feeling of panic and vertigo and feeling all the wind rush out of them even without hitting the ground, but staircases haven’t been invented yet.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise at all, not with all the questions he’s asked, not with the way the Walls of Heaven have been getting thicker and taller and the lines between angels and demons have been firming up and all of the cosmic uncertainties have been turning more and more certain.  And yet.  He hadn’t rebelled.  He hadn’t fought.  He’d thought, deep in his optimist’s soul, that sooner or later the whole thing would blow over and Lucifer and his lot would end up back where they belonged.  He’d thought, of course there’s a plan, I’d just like to see it.  Just to be ready.

(And perhaps he ignored the warning signs, and perhaps that was the sin: not optimism, but pride.  The sin of Lucifer’s fall.  The archangel vanity Michael and Gabriel still swear they do not possess.  He sauntered out of the gate and down, and sauntered back up to Heaven again, so very sure that of course it would be fine.  He was filled with God’s grace and love and blessing.  He was the Archangel Raphael.  He couldn’t do wrong.)

He thinks, now: of course there’s a plan, and probably this is part of it.  He thinks, Heaven is the place for those that follow every order without ever asking questions, so Hell must have been invented to test every order they can.  That’s his job now.  Hell is for doubt.  Hell is for questions.

It hurts, walking into Hell, feeling all his Divine grace and certainty burn away bit by bit.  It’s been hurting little by little for eons now, a growing ache that began as a throb and wracked his whole being when he stood in front of the closed gate and realized what it meant.  He really shouldn’t have been surprised to find himself at the bottom of a Fall.  He still isn’t clear on the purpose of suffering.

So: he remakes himself for doubt-sowing, for temptation to question and break divine orders, for this thing that must be his new purpose, probably.  He thinks, if this is the Ineffable Divine Plan, that it’s cruel and complicated in a way that does not feel either just or comprehensible from this end of it.  He’s got several more questions he’d like to have answered.   The rest of Hell remakes itself for cruelty and suffering, which must be their new purpose.  They have all suffered so much.  It must be what they’re for.  He thinks that if questions are what he’s for now, and if suffering leads to his asking questions, well, that’s tidily done then on the Ineffable’s side, isn’t it.

The Morning Star has begun calling himself The Adversary, turning Satan from a description into a name.  The demon that once called itself Raphael takes the shape of an animal he once built with his brother that likes to keep low to the ground, long and unseen by those above, and describes himself as The One Who Creeps.  English won’t be invented for another five thousand years, but one might translate the thing he’s calling himself into Crawly just the same.

He leaves Raphael up in Heaven with all things that belong directly to the angels.  He doesn’t miss it, exactly.  The name was his to use while he wore it, and now it’s Heaven’s to discard or reuse however they like.  There are other things he misses so much more.

There are gates in the wall around the Garden of Eden, the sort that were invented to let things pass through, but only in exactly the right way.  The angel guarding the one in the East is named a thing that would sound like Aziraphale if English had been invented yet, but because it hasn’t, Crawly hears Israfael.  Filling the gaps in the ranks, one way or another. 

Crawly wonders, but doesn’t ask, if the angel knows exactly what became of the archangel he was so clearly created to partially replace.  Time is firm, now, minutes moving past one after another, and he can only ask so many questions at once.

Right now, standing on the wall of the Garden overlooking a gate, he is wondering and he is asking: if it is a demon’s job to go against the will of God, but that job was given by God, then is doing that job in accordance with God’s will or not?  If God has given an order and a demon who was tasked by the ineffable design to countermand Them has convinced a pair of humans to go against that order, then has that demon in fact carried out a good deed under the auspices of God after all?  What happens to a demon if the other demons, who may also be doing jobs that were assigned by God but don’t believe that they are, decide that the first demon is acting too closely in line with God’s plans after all?

If an angel, who is explicitly tasked to follow the will of God, does a thing with a flaming sword that was very specifically not ordered by God, but they’re an angel and were tasked with a general sort of kindness to begin with, and were more or less attempting to act according to that general order by going against the spirit but not technically the letter of a more specific order vis-a-vis said sword, then just exactly how ineffable is the damned plan, anyway?

The angel who’s got the majority of Raphael’s name and no longer has a flaming sword clearly has a mind for loopholes.  Crawly wonders if that’s part of the job of being basically-Raphael, too.

Time passes.  Humans propagate.  Hell is cruel.  Humans are, too.  Crawly teaches them to be.  It’s his job, to make sure humans understand what cruelty is like, to make sure they have the whole picture.  He thinks maybe he’s got some of it figured out by now.  It’s something like a test.

The business with Noah is cruel, and it’s not Crawly’s doing at all.  Seeing it feels a little like an old echo of falling, the surprise-that-isn’t-a-surprise-at-all.

He does his job.  He asks the angel questions.  He tries to sow doubt.  He doesn’t save anybody, not even the unicorn.

(One of these things is wrong, is against everything that Crawly is supposed to be: that he stands by and lets them all suffer and drown, or that he regrets it.  He doesn’t know which it is, but he thinks he ought to.)

The business with Jesus is cruel, too.  He doesn’t flinch this time.  It’s too familiar by now, the miseries the Divine is so generous in handing out to sinners and innocent alike.

The boy comes back, because of course he does, and his followers spread, because of course they do, and the world--

It doesn’t change.  Not in any way that matters.  Crowley doesn’t know what he was expecting.

He puts on glasses, hides his eyes and his nature from Rome and everyone else, and doesn’t ask himself what he’d thought would happen, after all.  Doesn’t ask why he’d bothered hoping for anything.

He stops trying to lead the angel into asking unanswerable questions, after that.  They eat oysters.  Nobody talks about Christianity.

(One of these things would infuriate all the hosts of heaven if they ever knew: that he can’t bring himself to seriously tempt Aziraphale towards doubt any more, or that he ever really tried.  He thinks, perhaps, that it might be both.)

He thinks about being Raphael, sometimes, highest on high, welcomed into the presence of God Themself, crowned in grace and glory.  Usually he thinks about it right after humans have thought up something that’s sure to get him a commendation when he reports it down Below, right before he gets himself blind drunk enough to forget again.

The thing of it is, there was no getting blind drunk in Heaven to protect yourself from pain.  There wasn’t meant to be any suffering in Heaven to begin with.

Raphael was made to be a healer, and so he was, once, when Heaven needed a healer, before it invented the idea of a wall to keep all the newly-invented pain out.  It all seems more or less inevitable after that, really.

Aziraphale is a little bit Raphael’s replacement and Aziraphale is entirely himself, and the fact that he’s been both of those things at once has kept Crowley intrigued and unwillingly charmed ever since the Garden.  He’s not just a healer, but he’s good at healing miracles.  Crowley’s seen him at them, the happy grin that spreads across his face when he can relieve a random human of a little pain, so similar to the grin he gets over a good oyster.  It only makes sense that he’s down here on Earth, really.  Individuals belong in Heaven as much as healers do.

The thing of it is, there was no suffering in Heaven, and nor was there sin.  There was no gluttony or sloth or lust.  There was Grace and Blessing and capital-L Love, but Crowley doesn’t remember if Raphael ever loved anything the greedy, prideful, possessive, satisfying way he might just privately admit to loving his Bentley.

The thing of it is, Crowley has had this job for as long as time has been real, which is by definition both infinitesimally and infinitely longer than he was ever an archangel.  The thing of it is, Crowley is good at it.

(The thing of it is, tempting and sowing doubt and inspiring sin is no crueler than Heaven’s righteous wrath.  It might, sometimes, be kinder.  It might, sometimes, be Good.)

(The thing of it is that Crowley still believes, somewhere deep in the glowing core of himself, that this is all still according to the Ineffable Plan, and deep down, he’s never managed to forgive God for any of it.)

One of these things is unforgivable: that even now Crowley the demon, creator of Original Sin, tempter and exactly as the Almighty made him, for brief and passing moments, yearns desperately to be forgiven.  That even now Crowley the demon, who was once an archangel and gifted with the very highest blessings of God’s grace, would choose to reject any forgiveness he was offered and stay exactly as he is.  He doesn’t know which it is.

(He hopes--he fears--he thinks, deep in his soul, that it might be neither.  That it might be both.)

Here’s the truth: nowhere in Crowley’s six-thousand-plus-year existence as a demon does it really matter who he used to be.  Rank in Hell has nothing to do with rank in Heaven.  It never really did.

Satan, who was once Lucifer, who was once the brightest and most shining of them all, doesn’t love him in exactly the same way Satan doesn’t love any of his hordes of demons.  Satan once loved everyone and everything and God above all, and now doesn’t love anything, not even himself.

There’s nothing left in Crowley for Michael or Gabriel to recognize, and on the whole he prefers it that way.  They know, he presumes, that Raphael their brother is gone.  They grieve the Morning Star and they hate the Adversary with equal intensity, according to Aziraphale, and Crowley remembers both well enough.  Easy enough to extend the same to him.

Michael and Gabriel were always the worst of Heaven, anyway.  That’s the problem in standing with the surety of the entire Universe beneath your feet.  Stone statues don’t exactly take pleasure in being cruel, but that doesn’t make them any more forgiving.

And yet...

“I wonder sometimes,” Crowley says, on a sun-drenched afternoon in the South Downs, sitting on a porch next to Aziraphale, looking out over a garden with no walls.  

(It doesn’t need any.  No daring rabbit or unwary neighborhood child who’d venture too close would make that mistake twice.  Anyway, Crowley figured, any wall with a gate is just as easy to get through as not having a wall at all, and any wall without a gate is just a prison anyway.)

He stops himself, because he’d stopped trying to tempt the angel to doubt two thousand years ago, and there are some questions even he doesn’t quite know how to ask out loud.

“Wonder what, my dear?” Aziraphale asks.

“It never makes you furious, the idea that They planned it all like this from the beginning?” Crowley asks.  “That Satan and every last one of the rest of us demons was created already doomed to fall.  That humans were created to eat the apple and to be punished for it before they even existed.  That you were made--for me, or to replace me, or whatever the hel--the heaven they did or said about it, and they send you down here with me and me up here with you and six thousand years later there's us and the Antichrist, not a trumpet to blow between us, standing at the threshold of Armageddon and refusing to see it off.  It never bothers you, that all of this was part of the plan from the beginning, you and me and the house and the garden and all of it.”

“I find it deeply comforting, to be entirely honest,” Aziraphale admits.  “I do rather like where we’ve ended up, after all.  But what’s all this about replacing you?”

“Weeeeeeeell,” said Crowley.  He’d felt it was rather unfair at this point to go on having, if not precisely knowledge, then at least some well-supported hypotheses about the angel’s particular origins.  He still did not fancy having this conversation in the least.  “ ‘S not like you go creating an angel Israfael five minutes after a certain demon with the same basic name, you know, once upon a time, gets locked out of Heaven for asking too many questions without it being fairly obvious what you’re trying to do.  At least.  To the demon in question.”

Aziraphale gapes.  Crowley keeps his head very carefully inclined so he can keep looking casually out over the extremely lush back garden, and also not reveal his eyes in that gap between his sunglasses and his face.

“Raphael?” Aziraphale asks.  Crowley winces.

“Really, you did a much better job with the whole thing than I would’ve done,” he said.  “I mean, obviously.  If I’d been any good at the whole archangel thing, never would have ended up a demon to begin with, right?”

“Well, I--and I mean--the entire time?” he demands.  “Since the Garden?”

“Been a demon since well before the Garden, angel,” Crowley says, a bit of warning in the tone, six millennia of being forsaken behind him.

“But you knew about me,” Aziraphale says.  “And you.”

Crowley stretches his legs out ahead, and leans back on his elbows, long and lean and snake-like.  He doesn’t say, between the two of us, I think we’ve done the entire job Raphael was ever made to do, and I don’t think any archangel sitting up there in Heaven could’ve done it alone.  I think Raphael was always supposed to be just like this, and I’m so damned grateful, and I hate it.

“Not like this,” he says.  “Don’t think anyone without ‘ineffable’ in their title could’ve figured on it going like this.”

“Well,” says Aziraphale, who’s always been the other half of him after all, anyway.  “Considering all the other ways it could have gone...that is, if anyone was going to be an archangel and then vacate their post and need a replacement and then come back and dog my heels for six thousand years...oh, what I mean to say is, I’m glad it was you.”

“Yeah,” says Crowley, who figures that, at least, is a sentiment he can get behind.  “Me too.”

[qqueenofhades]

Oh man I have a prompt, but its so angsty and painful I feel a little guilty for asking it - can we have a soulmates feeling each other's pain troupe fic but for the Ineffable Husbands? Specifically, when Crowley falls, Aziraphale feels every bit of pain that he does

Sorry it took me a bit to get to this, as I have had 800 things going on. I would like to note in advance that this is obviously not my fault.

There is a story, and it goes like this, and God Herself is the only entity – animal, vegetable, or mineral, human, celestial, or infernal, living, dead, or not quite either – who remembers it.

The story goes that there’s a young angel with red hair and bright brown eyes and a particular keenness to help Her fashion the stars and nebulae and planets of Her new universe. Good with his hands, is this angel, and inquisitive, and won’t shut up with all the questions. He has another name back then, but whenever God recalls the story these days, She only thinks of him as he’s known now. Name is different. So are the eyes. That and a few other things. But that angel is Crowley, of course, and his wings are white, and his curiosity is unceasing, and God sometimes looks out and sees him still at it, spinning another ribbon of stardust across the under-construction universe. She has to send a few other angels out to get him to take a tea break. Bit of a weirdo, is Crowley. She’d like to see him have a few more friends.

Of course, God doesn’t actually get to socialise with Her underlings that much, and the friends that Crowley makes are arguably not the ones that he should have. God created the angels, and She loves them, but it turns out that not all of them love Her back. Always the danger of making anything that can think for itself, and even though She is, of course, Mother of All, God cannot force them to do that. She has to hope that it’ll pass. Usually does.

In the meantime, though, She has a few cards to play, and She can’t interfere overtly, but in hopes of making Crowley realise his friends are tossers, She calls up a Principality. Name of Aziraphale. Also a bit of a tosser, but in somewhat different ways, and one of the few whose loyalty to Heaven, Inc., is never in any shadow of a doubt. God gives him a flaming sword and a casual comment about how She just needs a bit of a tweak to that nebula there. That’s it.

(The fact that Aziraphale then, of course, meets Crowley is entirely inconsequential.)

“Hello,” the Principality says. “Er – think the Almighty just wanted me to pop by and check on – check on how things were going?”

“I’ve got it under control,” says the Power, rather ungraciously. He outranks Aziraphale, just barely (he’s the lowest level of the Second Sphere, with duties including the supervision of the cosmos and serving as a warrior, and Aziraphale is the highest level of the Third Sphere). “Bugger off.”

Aziraphale smiles nervously, and hems and haws, and finally Crowley sighs, dusts off his hands and sits down on the wisp of interstellar cloud to see what’s up with this odd comrade of his. It looks a bit like a park bench, although technically no park bench has yet been invented or fashioned, and Aziraphale sits down next to him. They gaze out over the heavens together.

“Beautiful,” Aziraphale says, after a moment. “Lovely work, dear fellow.”

Crowley glances sidelong at him, almost shyly. He is not used to wanting anyone’s approval, though he has drifted toward Samael, the charismatic and beautiful Morningstar, by the dangerous force of gravity that has begun to concern God and is the reason, of course, that Aziraphale is here. “You think?”

“I do. What’s that one there?”

Crowley squints. “Alpha Centauri,” he says. “Supposed to have a second one, I think. A twin. One star with two hearts.”

“Are you going to make that?” Aziraphale wonders if he’s intruding. “I can, er. Let you get on with it.”

“You can stay,” Crowley says absently, not really thinking about it. Gets up a good handful of star stuff, and begins to work at it, a potter with his clay, as Aziraphale watches. He’s good at it, distractingly so. His stars are beautiful, exact and clear and well-formed, and Aziraphale can feel the love that goes into them. Powers are not known for sentimentality, as might be expected, but Crowley is… he’s different. Or she is. Gender has not really been invented yet either, and Crowley isn’t fussy.

After that, they begin to meet regularly, Aziraphale coming by to sit and watch Crowley work, Crowley fashioning brighter and brighter stars to impress him, and since they are celestial beings and time is nothing and the world and its constraints does not yet exist, when all is possible, it cannot help but weave their essences together too. They’re sitting together again, and Crowley’s hair is caught in the solar breeze of the star she’s just finished, and she looks beautiful, she really does, and Aziraphale wonders what she would do if he reached over and took her hand. Just the two of them, out there in the universe. Angels aren’t supposed to be particular, exclusive, incorporated. Humans haven’t been made yet. The Earth is still in the drawing-board stages. But Aziraphale –

He wants, he wants, he wants. It feels dangerously close to something else, something that will lead him away from Heaven, and –

“We can’t,” he says to Crowley, who stares back at him, unimpressed. “We can’t meet anymore. I don’t like your friends. This isn’t what She wants.”

“How do you know what She wants?” Crowley counters. He is never one to take anything, even God’s word, for it. “And my friends aren’t that bad, you know. Just want to know why there’s so many stupid rules.”

“They aren’t stupid,” Aziraphale says anxiously. He reaches out for Crowley’s hand, for the first time, but Crowley pulls back. “They’re just for our own good.”

Crowley utters a short, unamused laugh. “You’re not very bright, Principality,” he says, more sharply than he has ever spoken to Aziraphale before, and it cuts like a whip. “That’s a shame.”

(God has tried, She has tried, and yet – )

The war comes. She fails. Even God must.

Heaven is torn apart by battle, as Samael leads the rebellion and becomes known, then and ever after, as Lucifer. Michael is fighting him, and she is the one who hurls him down. Meanwhile Aziraphale, flaming sword in hand, marches with the loyalist forces, comes face to face with Crowley in the thick of the madness, raises the blade, prepares to strike – 

Come on, Principality, Crowley says furiously. Do it.

(Aziraphale can’t do it.)

Then it’s Gabriel who is there, Gabriel who makes up for his weakness, and lashes out at Crowley, who takes the brunt of the blazing blow full on. The lightning and thunder flashes, it strikes Crowley and illuminates him from head to wingtip to toe, as his head throws back and he screams, he screams, in unspeakable agony. His wings crackle and blacken and burn, and he falls almost in slow motion, like something unbearably beautiful and unbearably wounded. Aziraphale watches him, then, watches him like the worst moment of his ineffable existence, and then –

He feels it. He feels the agony as if it is his own, and it drives him to his knees, gasping and breathless, even as the war rages overhead, dim and dreamlike. His wings ache as if they’re the ones burning, though they’re still offensively white and perfect. It rips through him, he can feel the severing of Heaven’s light, Heaven’s grace and glory, and he knows that is what’s happening to Crowley right now, can feel the blackness and the plunge and the shape of a new word, the word that will be the truth ever after, a new thing, a damned thing. Demon.

Aziraphale goes to all fours. Cannot bear it. Cannot. Cannot. Cannot –

Later, among the ruins and wrack of the battlefield, God finds him there. Stares at him. Feels, though She so rarely does about anything, wracked with guilt. She set him in Crowley’s path, and this is what became of it. Of them. It is no cruelty, She decides, if he does not remember it. Crowley will not. Everything burns.

God picks up one fallen angel, and gazes down, down, down, to the Fallen angel below. She did not mean for this. She never did. And yet.

(Not so very long later, the Earth is made, bright and new, and there is a garden, and a tree, and a man and a woman, and a snake slithers out and suggests a bite of the apple. Then after the humans have been exiled for this silly little thing, it wends up to the angel who stands on the wall, watching with a confusion and consternation he cannot articulate, turns into itself, and remarks, “Well, that went down like a lead balloon,” and so the story begins again.)

[creepy-crawley-crowley]

The Stars Welcome Him - Crowley x Male Demon Reader

Is wasn't requested, it just occurred to me. Yeah. I love space, okay?

Me and @fortune-fool02 both wrote a version if this fic, so go check theirs out. They're a really good writer as well!

I JUST REALLY LOVE SPACE

(That, my good friends, is The Grand Nebula. Amazing, isn't it? But also amazingly destructive.)

It wasn't a secret that Crowley liked space. In fact he loved it, but he also wanted to share it with someone. Aziraphale had...refused, in a way (you go too fast for me, Crowley), and he knew of nobody else that would go with him.

But then again, he did know someone, and that someone was Y/N, another demon, another fallen Angel, one with the darkest red wings, with feathers like blades. When Y/N had been an Angel, he watched over War. He gave his feathers to unknowing humans, and they used them as swords, and now bullets.

Y/N had wanted to fall. He watched over War and had soon learned that Angels were worse than their counterparts. And so he had disobeyed, questioned, and fallen.

He had, however, also fallen.

And he had fallen in every sense of the word. He had fallen from Heaven, but he had also fallen for Crowley.

Now, Y/N and Crowley weren't dating. Not really. It had never been confirmed by either if them and neither had really asked the other out, but it was all there. And as cheesy as it were, neither if them really knew. Everyone except the two knew.

Crowley wanted to take Y/N to see Alpha Centauri. He helped create it. He wanted Y/N to see the beauty if what he had made, his own little paradise.

Every Demon had an animal assigned to them. Beezlebub had their flies, Hastur his Frog, and Ligur his Chameleon. Crowley had the Snake. Y/N had a Raven. A large, black, intimidating Raven perched on his shoulder at all times.

A raven, or a crow, was often seen as a sign of death, and it was true. Y/N collected damned souls, and sent them to Hell. He travelled wherever his work took him, he dealt with more important souls, and his ravens dealt with less important souls.

However, Y/N was having a week off. His ravens could deal with the work, there was enough of them.

There was a sudden knock at Y/N's door, and he answered it, knowing who it was.

"Crowley, took ya long enough." Y/N smiled, wrapping Hus arms around the serpentine demon. Crowley chuckled quietly, returning the embrace, and then he pulled away, taking Y/N's hand, and leading them outside, to his Bentley.

"I'm taking you on a trip." Crowley stated, and Y/N raised an eyebrow, questioning. "Alpha Centauri, it'll be fun. It's lovely this time of year." He explainer, and Y/N grinned.

Y/N knew about Crowley's previous occupation, and therefore knew about Alpha Centauri. "Oh, really? It's about time. Let's go!" He chirped excitedly, the Raven on his shoulder flapping, mirroring Y/N excitement.

Crowley started the Bentley, and off they went. He drove out of the city, past Tadfield, into endless fields. This is where they stopped. Both got out of the car, and they headed, hand in hand, away from the road, away from sight.

"Crow, how are we gonna get there?" Y/N asked, and Crowley smirked.

"A miracle, duh." Crowley chuckled, and he snapped his fingers.

Y/N suddenly couldn't breathe. It wasn't an issue, though, because he could just miracle some oxygen up, and ta-da, he could breathe again. There was also the issue of keeping his corporeal body together, so that used another miracle. He then looked around, and was awestruck.

Alpha Centauri was actually a star, so Crowley had moved them to Proxima Centauri b, a nearby exoplanet that was in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star. Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri were both visible in the clear sky. Well, technically there was no sky, as there was no atmosphere, but it could be called a sky.

More distant stars glittered and glimmered in the distance, dotted around like glowing freckles, and if Y/N looked hard enough, he could spot the Sun, the very sun that Earth orbited, and he grinned.

Faint Nebulae were visible, just about, and so were nearly invisible Supernovae. Y/N marvelled at the sight, and then turned to Crowley, tears in his eyes.

"Thank you for bringing me here, Crowley." Y/N whispered, and Crowley smiled ever so slightly, and wrapped a jet black wing around Y/N's smaller body. Y/N brought out his wings too, and spread them out, blood red, razor blade feathers obscuring the sky behind them, but it didn't matter because nobody was looking behind them.

"I've always wanted to bring someone here. I wanted people to see what I had created, I wanted them to see that I'm not just a demon. I used to be an angel too. I created these stars, these planets, these nebulae." Crowley mumbled, standing up. Y/N stood too. "I don't just make trouble." Crowley added. Y/N nodded.

"No, you made something beautiful. People will look out at all this for years and years to come, and although they don't know you did this, they will marvel at your work." Y/N smiled at Crowley. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

"Yeah. Yeah it is."

Taglist:

@dekahg @meganlpie @whatawildone @highfunctioningfangirl19 @steampowerednightvaler @alexa-lightwood-blog

[bonesthebeloved]

Of sunsets and Evening gowns - a Good Omens fanfic

@punk-aziraphale I thought you might like this???

count: 5772

Summary: A brief history of a fallen angel, his soulmate, his struggle with gender and a ineffable happy ending

TRIGGER/SQUIK WARNING: Period typical trans/homophobia, crying, emotional distress, discription of pain (the fall), mention of food (if I forgot any, feel free to point them out to me)

Story:

He'd always rather enjoyed sunsets.

One of the almighty her better inventions; colours bleeding through the sky and shadows stretched long and dark, the red and orange and deep purple hitting the objects in the light's way to the earth underneath his feet, wrapping them in the soft glow of the last hours of the day.

Now that he thought of it, he wasn't quite sure if God herself had created the colourful wave of goodbye the sun gave the earth every time it turned.

It must've been another angel, She had never been one for details like these.

And maybe it was well known who had created it!

Dawn and Dusk, morning and evening.

Yes, maybe it was. Though he wouldn't know either way.

He'd never really had contact with the others, too far off in the galaxy creating stars and nebulas to be around them much and always getting ushers away from them when he got too close.

'I want to see what they are making,' he had said. Well, not really. Back then they didn't really have a voice. Or something that could be considered a body, for that matter.

'Don't dwell on them, brother,' had been his answer. 'They are lesser, as we are the ones that give shape to the divine plan.'

Back then, when everything had still been peaceful and emotions and actions were being named left and right, he had agreed with his brother. Simply because, in the short time that the emotion had existed, he had felt nothing but annoyance for Gabriel.

A few years went by (after someone had gone through the trouble of naming them just that) before he returned to earth, his newest creations merely small white dots in the endless dark of the night sky as he sat on what would soon be called the wall of Eden, the feet of his now human-shaped form, dangling over the edge of it as he looked out over the garden;

The trees and flowers and water and dirt still untouched by any living creature except for the angel that brought them into existence.

"Brother, what are you doing here? Gabriel has been asking for you."

The term brother didn't feel as if it were fitting for his relationship with the other archangels. Not really.

Though a different term for what they would then be hadn't been invented yet and he didn't bother doing it himself.

"Hello, Lucifer. Sorry for worrying you. Was just curious 'bout what the other angels have been so busy creating down here. Seems like it's quite a lot."

"That it does, Raphael."

"You ever wonder what this is all supposed to be for? Her, creating all of this just to test the humans I mean?"

Lucifer sat down next to him now, a reserved expression on his face, both of their wings brushing the stone beneath them where they were stretched comfortably behind them. There was no reason to hide their wings. Not yet anyway.

"Every day I wonder brother. You're not alone in your doubts. I overheard her saying terrible things: Talk of death and disease. Of war and hunger. I wonder why she would subject any creature of her own making to such cruelty. Wonder if the souls that will be lost due to her testing would mean anything to Her. And, if they do not, if ours don't do so either."

Lucifer had always had a way with words. Good at getting what he wanted when he wanted it by carefully selecting them and twisting them into complex puzzles which one would only figure out when listening to them a couple of times.

Raphael nodded in agreement before actually realising he was doing so.

But there were more important things about this that he should have realised.

Like how Lucifer was more manipulative than he was simply pushy. That he had him wrapped around his finger and, that with that simple nod, he had signed for his own execution.

***

He liked to tell others that he didn't really fall. That it hadn't hurt him as much as it had the others and that he went on his accords; only because he wanted to go and not so much because God had cast him out.

But when one hits the ground so harshly, any fragile human would have died on impact, his wings burning and burning and his sight gone, body heat dropping rapidly, there is not much else one could do except scream in pure agony.

After what felt like double the time he had been alive for until then -which had been quite a while- he regained his vision again, now able to see significantly better in the dark and make out his wings, black as night and every movement hurting him so severely he was certain he had burns all over the muscles and fat underneath the burned mass of feathers.

It wasn't crowded, not yet anyhow.

Lucifer and he had fallen first.

'To show the others that She will have no mercy,' his brother had said. The darkness around them so dark that it hid what he had become or currently was becoming.

Once more angels fell, he asked his brother what they'd do now. Though before he could even get past the last vowel of his name he heard Lucifer hiss at him as if the mere mention of his name had hurt him.

'We can't keep our old names brother. They are God-given and will, therefore, do us harm. Demons aren't made to have anything angelic.'

The word 'demon' had never been used before that exact moment. Though as it rolled off of his brother's tongue, Raphael knew that that was exactly what they were...

***

He got the job just four days after falling.

Lucifer, who now called himself Satan and who Raphael no longer saw as anything close to a brother (or an ally and trustworthy person for that matter) telling him to 'cause some trouble' as that was what they were now meant to be doing.

He was happy to leave; Hell (which is what they had called their new home) had gotten awfully crowded and, as the boundaries had disappeared with angels falling from the sky, way too touchy for his liking. He'd refused a position of power after being offered one. Had refused to rule alongside Satan or do anything that would elevate his status in any way. So Satan, seeing no other use for him, had given him a mission and it was so that he made his way to earth for the very first time since the fall.

He searched out a reflective surface -in this case, a large body of water he would later learn was called a lake- as soon as he arrived, finally able to see what he looked like and if he had changed anywhere near as severely as Lucifer had done.

He hadn't, it turned out. His skin was not red and burned like his brother's was and in almost every way he looked the same as he had done before the fall. Maybe dishevelled and wearing black, ash stained clothing instead of the pure and clinical white he'd worn before, though the same none the less,

That is, nearly everything.

He stared at his reflection. Yellow, reptile-like eyes staring back at him, unblinking. The slits thin and fearful looking. The yellow having driven away every bit of white in his eyes.

He hadn't found it so bad at first. Had almost found them charming in the way they reminded him of his creations, the only animal-like creatures he had created that slithered through the trees and winded their elegant bodies around the branches, scales shimmering in the sunlight.

After hearing about how there was only one rule he could have the newly made humans break to satisfy Lucifer's urging on to make them break as many as possible, it only seemed logical to turn into one of his serpent friends and tempt the curious Eve to eat an apple.

***

The angel was strange.

For starters, he knew that they were supposed to be enemies. That the divine had urged them all on to smite every demon within smithing range.

What he also knew though, was that Aziraphale would not be doing any smithing and that hiding from the rain under an angel's wing was comfortable and way more so than he had deemed appropriate for all of his four days in Hell.

Another thing he did know was that, as soon as the name Crawley had left his lips, rolling off his tongue while they watched the humans set their first steps outside of the garden, was that he didn't like it. It almost sounded like an insult to him and to the lovely creatures Eve was so kind as to give the name 'snakes' to.

Of course, he wouldn't ask Aziraphael what his name was before a good hundred years had passed. That he technically didn't have to ask as he had somehow known it before he had even crawled up on the wall of Eden was beside the point.

***

The relationship they formed over the decennia, over thousands of years, was something that transcended human description.

Some might call them lovers when seeing them walk alongside each other in the park or dine at yet another small establishment Crowley had found for them. Maybe it was the way Aziraphale always called him dear in that soft, endearing ton of his or maybe it was because Crowley had called Aziraphale angel so many times it had led to the humans making it a pet name of their own after one of them overheard him saying it.

Others would call them friends. With the way, they always were there for each other and could talk for hours and hours with a good bottle of wine. Discussions going on deep into the night about the memories they had made.

The ones who called them soulmates would probably be the ones closest to an even vaguely accurate explanation.

The way they felt lost when the other was gone. How they seemed to know every quirk and every thought and the thought process behind it so well it seemed to others as if they had invented telepathy.

And yet, Aziraphale always seemed just out of reach.

When Crowley asked for them to go to a restaurant the first time, he got shot down with a dismissive wave and an awkward laugh,

When he asked again about three-hundred years later, he got a soft 'You go to fast for me Crowley' in return and proceded to wrack his brain over that sentence. He had goten drunk and sobered up and got drunk again and had talked to his plants while they shook in fear, their owner rambling on about those seven words. Speculating if it was only ment to be about the speed at which he drove and if it wasn't, what the angel had ment by it otherwise.

It had taken him hours and several bottles of various types of alcohol to come to the conclusion that, if it meant something other than him using the entirety of his bentley's speedometer, that he would just wait and see how their relationship progressed.

***

Crowley and Aziraphale, just like all angels and demons, were both technically genderless.

Both of them had corperations which would be considered male though. And because they also tended to dress in mostly masculine ways (Crowely had once told the angel that the only reason for that was that most mens clothing was way more comfortable) and they had both chosen a male presenting bodies, they were spoken to as such and neither of them really minded.

But Crowley had always loved mixing it together.

'Womans' pants and skirt he liked he would buy without even thinking about the ridiculous gendering of things.

His 'experiments' had gotten less risky over the milenia as humans started to develop genderrolls and he was burned at the stake for wearing a lovely lightgrey and black dress in 1652. Aziraphale was still convinced that the burning had taken place because of the fire that had been floating just above Crowley's palm which he was using to heat up his tea with. But he could also admit that the wonderfully crafted dress probably hadn't helped his case.

The very first time (which also turned out to be the last time for quite a while) that Aziraphale had actually been there to witness Crowley's bolder fashin choices (the demon would laugh in your face for calling a certain piece of fabric a 'bold choice')  had been in the 80's.

A riot in Germany surrounding the wall that seperated the country in two had driven them both away and so they found themselves fleeing from their respective places to go to the safehouse they had created for the two of them somewhere in the late 20's.

England, which is were the lovely little cottage was located, was completely safe at the time, so, after greeting eachother with a handshake and a smile (Crowley had to restrain herself from giving the angel a hug.)  they decided on going to one of their newest discoveries: A small restaurant in an alleyway lit with fairy lights where they sold the most wonderful creme brulé.

Aziraphale was already waiting for the demon when she finally came out of her room, hands twisting nervously in the material of the slightly flowy skirt. The fabric looked like some very light cotton, the jet black thing having a high waistband that made the dark grey button-up she had tucked into it poof up a little.

With her currently delightfully long and partly braided hair completing the look Aziraphale had a hard time keeping his hands to himself as Crowley gave him an anxious smile, eyes flickering from Aziraphale to the floor, to the wall and back to Aziraphale again.

"You look wonderful my dear. Come on now, dinner awaits."

The angel knew, of course, that this was the first time Crowley wore anything considered too feminine for a mostly male presenting person to wear since that dicorperation about 360 years ago.

What Aziraphale also knew though, was that his companion looked positively deligtful and so very fragile in the way she kept adjusting the skirt. He would try to make sure the fragilness would be replaced with confidence even if it was the last thing he did.

So he stuck out his arm, offering it to the demon with a small smile. It quickly turning into a wide grin as Crowley reluctantly took it and smiled back at him as he opened the door for the both of them.

"Shall we then, my dear?"

***

Humans could be cruel.

He had realised this many times in the past and would realise it again on many occasion in the future.

That didn't mean that he was prepared in the slightest for what waited for his partner outside of the bookshop.

Slur after slur was thrown her way. Their way, in some occasions of people taking note of their linked arms. Pebbles and food was thrown at Crowley (all of it miraculously missing her of course) and glare after glare, whisper after wisper he saw the small smile slide of off her lips,

Hadn't it been for Aziraphale letting go off the simple spell that kept his ethernal form hidden and showing some rather rude gentelmen his true form, Crowley would have actually been assaulted. (That she could very well defend herself or, if need be, simply transform into a snake and slither away from them, did not occur to him.)

They returned to the bookshop before less than an hour had passed between that moment and them first exiting it. 

They hadn't gone to the restaurant and Aziraphale now had a firm arm around Crowley who was strangely quiet, even her slightly too fast intakes of breath being nearly unnoticable.

"My dear, are you alri-" "It'sssss fine angel. I'm doing sssssuper."

Crowley seemed to get slightly mad after the last part, Harshly ripping the skirt off and miracled herself into a large black hoodie and some jeans. She pulled her legs up and curled up on the couch rather then taking on her usual position of laying sprawled out over it in the most obnoxious way possible, hair now up in a messy bun that made the angel itch to undo it and run his hands through her hair.

Aziraphale watched her, a sad smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he nodded and silently went to make his demon some tea.

He had just poured the water into the cups as he felt something nudging his left pants leg, looking down just in time to see the end of a scaled black tail before the head of a rather large snake peeked over the counter to look at him. The snake reluctantly slithering towards the angel's outstretched hand after a while.

"Oh! Hello there beauty" Aziraphale's voice was barely above a whisper as he spoke to the snake, carefully petting her head before letting her wind herself around his arm and drape over his shoulders comfortably, size seeming to be significantly smaller as she had been a second ago.

Aziraphale simply smiled and ran a hand over the smooth scales before picking up the two mugs and carrying them (and the serpent) towards his rarely used bedroom rather than towards the couch they had previously been sitting on.

The snake (or rather, Crowley as a snake, let's not beat around the bush here) hissed quietly in a manner that the angel identified as one of unease, resulting in Aziraphale quietly explaining that she needed some rest.

And thus the cups were set down, Aziraphale miracled himself into some rather comfy pyjamas (He still prefered to sleep nude, though he didn't think Crowley would apprechiate that very much at that particular moment) and the demon lay rolled up comfortably in the angels arms, yellow eyes with dialated pupils lazily looking up at him before blinking shut.

The angel laid them both down carefully, shifting the serpent in his arms to make sure they were both comfortable. He was sure that Crowley had fallen asleep by the time he whispered a soft 'you looked wonderful in that skirt my dear.' And then, ten minutes later, he finally felt able to say the rest: "I hope you know that I love you, no matter what form, body or clothing, I always will."

After ten long seconds of silence, Aziraphale already accepting that he wouldn't get a reply and have made peace with the fact that it simply was a conversation for another time, felt Crowley slowly shift back into her human form and, once she was fully changed, wrap her arms around the angel.

He didn't get a verbal reply back then. Didn't get one for a long time after that either. But angels weren't anything if not patient. And it was alright.

He could live with it. He hadn't been pushed away or told of after all.

***

Crowley, for all the years he had loved Aziraphale in a way that couldn't just be explained with a simple 'I love you' was utterly useless when it came to telling the other that the feeling of love wat mutual. Nothing really changed after that evening after all. Thought Crowley didn't wear skirts again up until it being his desguise in their plan to prevent Armagedon.

He didn't say anything about the confession Aziraphale had made up until Armaged-oh-never-mind and a bit after that.

He didn't say anything until four months after said even had not taken place and he and the angel had decided that today was an excelent day to visit Anathema. The Them had just left, Adam giving them both a wide and highly un-Antichrist-like grin as Pepper rambled on about how they ought to make mudpies this time instead of the horendous stone and sand filled cake they'd made last time Wensleydale wanted to play bakery.

Anathema had told the two celestial beings to go sit in the back room and make themselves comfortable while she and Newt prepared dinner and so they sat, watching the raindrops on the windows when Aziraphale started the conversation.

"Do you remember what it was like? Heaven, I mean. I've heard of demons forgetting everything before the fall and we've never talked about it before but I fell as if... You talk about certain things, like the stars and the galaxy as if you watched them be created and I- Oh dear is this a bad subject?"

Crowley knew the last part had been added because of how pale he had gotten. How still he was sitting. 

Crowley also knew that, how much easier it would be to lie put aside, he would never do that to Aziraphale.

So he secured himself. Mentally hiding away in his little bomb shelter and hoping for the best.

"Yeah, most of them forgot. Memory wiped. Clean slate and all that. I... remember though. Not everything of course, and it took me a he- heav- an awfully long time to recover them.

I remember... I remember the fall. How it felt. The creations we all put into the world..."

Aziraphale, though he'd pulled away, backpaddled as soon as he realised this topic was making his partner highly uncomfortable, latched onto the new conversation topic like a predator to its prey.

"What was your favourite creation then?"

Crowley thought for a moment, Snakes had been It by a long shot had you asked him 6000 years ago. But times change, and so do celestial beings. And his hatred for the snake eyes that had always made him not able to fit in just right ran deep.

"I quite enjoy the Nebula's I helped create. Alpha Centaury still has that little something that just pulls me towards it. Two stars always circling until they will eventually collide and become one, go down together."

"Wasn't Alpha Centaury-" "The one I asked you to run away to? Yeah. A bit selfish of me to pick my own I know."

Aziraphale stayed very quiet as Crowley watched how the raindrops ran down the glass. Grey clouds obscuring the sunset that should be happening right about now and putting a slight damper on the contentness he felt.

"...Did- Didn't the archangels create all the stars, my dear boy?"

Ah, that's what he had been forgetting then. He looked at Aziraphale out of the corner of his reptilian eye, seeing how the angel was watching him closely.

"Crowley?"  he turned his head now, meeting his partners gaze head-on at that specific moment felt nearly as difficult as it had been to walk on the holiest of grounds in the body that wasn't his to undergo an execution which he knew would fail. Nearly.

"Crowley were you- and don't lie to me, my dear. We're you-"

He must've said it. Crowley was sure of it. But he hadn't heard it.

The word forbidden, burning him like a red hot iron rod would have done. And Aziraphale must've noticed him hissing. Watched him crumble and catch his breath as if he'd just been punched.

"Crowley?"

"Yeah. Fine- I'm fine. I jussst-whatss the he-heav-ssssomthing! What was that? "

"I don't know. Are you alright?" and then, once he was sure Crowley was not harmed in any way: "And I know I'm pushy my dear but this is important. Are y-" Crowley silenced him with a hiss and a warning finger. Eyes wide and panicked.

"Don't- don't say that. The name. I- It hurts me."

"So... So you are-"

"Yeah. I guess I- I don't know angel. Whatever you said, whatever name must be correct as otherwise, it wouldn't have-... Yeah. The name is the only thing I could never remember."

Aziraphale kept silent, simply looking at him with a strange sort of sadness in his eyes. Maybe a bit of betrayal.

" I'm sorry I never told you, angel. I was just... Scared, I guess. "

The other nodded, still sitting very still and watching him. Behind them, thunder rumbled as the sky darkened.

"W-what was your favourite? Creation I mean."

The angel gave him a sad smile at the change of topic and reached out, wanting to pat his hand, though decided against it and laid his own on the armrest instead.

"I always quite liked the pufferfish I made. Funny creatures, those things.

Though sunsets are my favourite I believe. The pretty colours making up the golden hour, quite proud of those."

Crowley, who had been fidgeting with one of his jacket pockets, looked up sharply, staring at the angel for a hot second before blurting out 'you made the sunset?' immediately followed by a quick 'sorry' as he realised how blunt that sounded.

Though Aziraphale only looked happily surprised at the reaction, glad he could lend the other a distraction.

"I did. Always found it too boring so I threw some colours in. I'm not sure Emanuel was happy with me playing around with his morning and evening concept but it made the humans smile once they saw it so I think it was worth it."

"Sunsets have always been my favourite thing about the earth," Crowley said without really being able to stop himself.

"I've always wondered who would think of such a thing. Looking back I suppose it should be obvious that you would be that angel. You've always been the only creative one out of all the bastards up there."

They both laughed at that, light and unbothered as the raindrops raced each other down the glass.

" I meant what I said in the 80s you know. "

The topic change came sudden and made Crowley forget that his human body needed air for a few moments.

It was said with such intense casualty. The meaning carefully woven through the words and tone one that would be normal if this had been said mere hours, or perhaps days, after that confession. Not nearly forty years.

"About me loving you no matter what, I mean. We do need to talk about you being... Them. Someday, that is. But not now if you don't want to. And I do get it if you don't want to be associated with me like that. But I wanted you to know so you-" "Angel"

Aziraphale looked at him, cutting his nervous ramble short, eyes round, blown wide as he let Crowley take his hand.

There were so many ways he had told the angel that he cared about him deeply without having said 'I love you'.

He didn't think it was needed. That there were better ways of showing it. Like dinners and offers for a lift home. Like picking up a signed copy of a book that the angel just happened to be looking for for the last few months and like an offer to stay at his flat while the both of them sat on a bench in a small village.

And perhaps, for him there were. But Aziraphale needed the confirmation. Needed those words so he would stop doubting what they had was special.

"Aziraphale..."

He said again, a small smile tugging at his lips."I love you to angel."

Said celestial seemed to suddenly relax as if all of the air had been let out of him. Like a deflating balloon, as his face lit up with a smile so bright Crowley felt the need to reach for his shades that sat on the table beside them.

"Oh thank the lord-" (Crowley whispered a quick 'she had nothing to do with it' under his breath at that) "-Then I won't have to return this." And with one fluid movement, he pulled out a little velvet black box.

"Zira... Is that-" "A wedding ring yes you're correct." "And you want to-... With me?"

Aziraphale smile got possibly even brighter as he nodded enthusiastically. "As if I would ever give it to anybody else. I thought, as we are already bound to each other for life and both care about each other very much, why not get married!"

"You-I- we can't- demon?"

"Crowley, if you're about to say that we can't because of our respective sides, let me remind you of a certain conversation we've had about us being on our own side."

"No, Zira I didn't--well, I did but that's not what I wanted to say."

What Crowley actually had wanted to say, would have been something along the lines of 'I've been dropping hint for 6000 FUCKING YEARS angel but to straight-up ask me to marry you might be moving a bit to fast even for me.' or perhaps 'Of course I'll say yes angel don't give and never have given two shits about what above or down under think now please show me the ring or I might cry.'

Though what actually came out of the demon's mouth, was sputtering and a slightly chocked up sound, Aziraphale merely waiting for his response to get somewhat closer to becoming words, the little black ring box still closed in his slightly outstretched hand.

"Can I... Can I see it? The ring I mean."

"Oh, of course, my dear. Though I must warn you, it's a bit cheesy. If you truly don't like it we can always go get ourselves some new ones."

When Crowley opened the little box, a high pitched noise came out of his throat, the only thing he could manage was to simply stare down at the ring.

Two light gold angel wings, tips and basses touching to form a perfectly round circle Crowley was sure to fit like a glove once he put it on. The represented his angel, of course.

"Aziraphale, I-" "It's alright if you don't like it. That's not what it's about after all but-" "No angel, I love it. It's beautiful but I-well I've had this for so long and I didn't know you would-... Well, beat me to the punch I suppose."

At that he reached into his inner pocket to pull out a pure white box, the thing having sat in the pocket for such a long time that the angel has stopped noticing that there was something there.

The demon opened the box, revealing a simple silver band, a small and incredibly detailed black snake wrapping around it two times.

" Crowley is that-" "An engagement ring? Yes. I should've asked sooner, or at least told you but... Well, I'm not the best at expressing any sorts of love."

"Well then, we better get on with it then, right?"  the angel said, giving Crowley a nervous smile before getting down on one knee.

Both of them were too wrapped up at the moment to notice Anathema standing by the door, leaning against the doorframe as she watched the scene unfold.

" Anthony J. Crowley." Aziraphale started, watching as the fond little smile on the demons faces morphed into a full-on, gleeful grin. "I've known you since the very beginning, we've gone through literally everything together and while no human word would be able to accurately describe what we are to each other, I've found that the word soulmate to be a term I've grown quite fond of when referring to you in my head. We've known each other since the very beginning and will continue to know each other till the very end. This human formality is not necessary in any way. But 'my husband' or 'my wife' has always had a nice ring to it for me and I'm certain it would feel like just another type of connection we'd share.

So Crowley. Anthony J- demon- Crowley, will you marry me?"

Crowley's world seemed to be nearly as frozen as it had been when he had actually stopped time.

He was aware of his heart thumping very fast, almost obnoxiously so, seeing as it technically had no purpose whatsoever. He was aware of the sound of the drops hitting the cemented tiles on Anathema her terras and was fully and wholeheartedly aware that neither of those things should be holding his attention right now.

"I-yeah. Yes of course angel."

Aziraphale. Even as Crowley didn't dem it possible, smiled even brighter as he had before, a bit of his angelic grace momentarily slipping through, the faint outlines of wings shimmering in the air behind his back.

He hugged Crowley then, soft curls tickeling his counterparts neck as his face lay buried in his neck.

Now, it's important that you are aware of a certain quirk that our angel has. Aziraphale, when extremely happy or content, would accidentally influence his surroundings. Not that a poor man suddenly winning the lottery with the single ticket he'd bought or every rose in the garden blooming in mid-winter was a particularly bad thing, it was just rather odd to most bystanders. And, because Crowley had experienced such phenomenon before and was fully aware of the possibility of it happening at that moment he was only mildly surprised when it stopped raining and every flower in Anathema's garden opened up at once.

"Aziraphale?" they were still hugging, Crowley resting his chin on his angel's shoulder, Anathema smiling and slipping away (before either of them could notice her) to go and get the two of them a slice of cake by their tea as a form of celebration.

"Yes, my dear boy?"

"What would you say if I were to wear a dress to our wedding?"

Aziraphale felt like a bit of his heart melted at the fragile tone that barely covered up layers and layers of insecurities his demon had hid away for so long it had become another part of his personality.

"I would tell you that I would be absolutely delighted and quite sure that you would look all kinds of wonderful Crowley."

The demon made a little happy noise in the back of his throat muffled by the angles shoulder as he watched the last of the raindrops race each other down the glass and a soft breeze swept away the clouds to reveal the sun setting between the trees of Anathema's garden.

And the evening sky tinted red and yellow as the sun sank down, at peace with the world she was leaving behind.

[cipher-fresh]

Requiem for a Starmaker

Crowley helped build the stars in Heaven. He still thinks about them, sometimes.

“Oohh, I helped build that one.”

It was scary, admittedly, when the sun went down for the first time. It shouldn’t have bothered Crawly, he could see in the dark, but it wasn’t like being a demon constantly made the sky blue-. Colors were just more distinct for him and his eyes were fashioned to be much more efficient at taking in light to see. None of this was spelled out for him helpfully in a You’ve Just Fallen From Grace: 5 Amazing Tips to Love Your New Despicable Place in God’s Plan! brochure. Brochures that were handed out included tourism of the crater created when the Morningstar fell, and pools of superheated sulfur. Crawly had put it down after reading the first four lines, and stood in a large cavern before he was told to Get Up There And Make Some Trouble. Fortunately, he hasn’t seen very much of Hell. What he has seen was very close to the ground. 

There hadn’t been a conception of anything the opposite of Holy, not until the Fall. Corporations hadn’t been a thing, everybody paraded around with vaguely-humanoid bodies, or wheels of fire and multitudes of eyes, their wings and all other manner of limb and face. Corporations worked like this, see. There was a horrible, infernal lava-filled pool in Hell (holy water water fountain and waterfall in Heaven) where the paperwork would be sent to the computer, scanned and digitized, and the Pool of Energy would churn out a body. It would rise eerily (peacefully and relaxed, in Heaven’s case) and lifelessly, much like a perfect corpse, from the bottom of the pool, where the incorporeal(1) form of the being would walk into the body and claim it. 

When Crowley Fell, his body had burned in the sulphur pools, his nerves already alight from the feeling of his body being compressed into a snake- one of Her last gifts to him. It wasn’t like losing his limbs was a help, as if less of his body would be in pain- his snake form was much bigger than most other snakes of Her creation. Not only did he have the memory and constant existence of being a demon, he had slitted yellow eyes, scales on his body that he hid with long sleeves and trousers, a brand on the side of his face, a forked tongue, and constant, desperate search for warmth wherever he could find it. 

Well, Crowley supposed, the warmth thing wasn’t specific to snakes, Hell was always on fire and burning to counteract the ice in one’s heart after being rejected by Heaven. Crowley specifically got spit in his, well, eyes- he wanted nothing more than to fit in with humans, to be popular, or even accepted- and he was the one cursed by God Herself. 

You know how magic is often based off belief and imagination? Crowley imagined that his car was fine, so it kept driving to Tadfield. It’s kinda like that. Aziraphale had spent six thousand years on Earth in a Micheal Sheen-esque human corporation, and he didn’t view his true self as the biblical description of an angel with eyes and wheels and limbs galore, but as gayer-than-a-treeful-of-monkies-high-on-nitrous-oxide, grandfather-looking english professor from the 1890s. (Otherwise known as a human being. You aren’t healing nanogenes from an intergalactic war, so please don’t think all humans look like Micheal Sheen. It would be nice if they did, I think, though.) So, Aziraphale imagined himself, even when lacking a corporation, to look like the person Crowley called ‘angel’ and fed ducks with. All the other angels in his platoon right before they were ready to fight before The-Apocalypse-That-Never-Was had already been given human corporations and they paraded around in heaven in them. Angels (and demons!) could technically do paperwork on computers in their True Forms (ultra-fast, slim, high-tech touchscreens in Heavenly cases, nineties-esque Apple II color computers in Hellish cases.

The animals scampered when dark came. They’d gotten used to it, it had happened for three days or so, and Crawly looked up as the sun went down. He wondered, did Adam and Eve know about the Fall? The stars in the sky? Did the moon scare them? It was a full moon tonight, hanging in the air, in full view. The desert they’d walked through together, being watched by an angel and a demon, both looking solemn, and straight ahead as the angel covered the demon with his wing, the first rain opening from the first cloudy skies. 

The rain had dissipated after fifteen minutes. When the angel lowered his wing, a bit awkwardly, Crawly said “I guess I’ll be, uh, off then.” he shifted back into a snake, and went to leave, before pausing-. “...thankssss.”- and slithered down the side of the wall. 

And, now, here he was. The sun going down, the real darkness, nothing stormclouds could manufacture. Crawly, still a snake, looked up. Twinkling lights, they looked so close while in Eden. What was the word for those things? They were on-fire balls of gas, Crawly knew, he’d helped make them, along with nebulas and galaxies and planets. What was the word? Not...oh, Crawly knew it had an ssss sssound, sssstellar, something like that. Crawly had built so much in Heaven, and he missed it dearly. Here he was, admiring them with physical eyes, from behind an atmosphere and the void of space and insurmountable distance, but it was his creation. One of his little marks on the world. He’d done something beautiful, and he could admire it. 

Crawly didn’t even get to admire his own creations in Heaven, he’d make them, then be told very forcefully to get work done on the next planet. 

Turning around, his view was blocked by trees and forest. A very determined snake-demon, Crawly slithered back up to the spot where the angel had been- the angel long gone, of course, who had nipped back to Heaven, probably to tell the Heavenly Host that they needed to collectively smite a single demon who had snuck into the Garden, tempted the humans and got them unfairly punished. 

Finally pulling up the rest of his sinuous body to the wet ground he had been standing on earlier, Crawly had a better view of the sky. A much better view, the sky almost illuminated blue from the imposing view of some nearby(2) nebula. Crawly wondered what it would look like if the earth rotated a bit more, the moon would rotate with it and, hopefully, if things matched up, the moon would be full, and in view of the nebula. It would be a pretty sight, such a striking white from the moon illuminating the night, the foreground in front of a stunning blue pattern, accented by all those little things in the sky. Crawly watched as some blinked into existence, some had been created at the end of the first week, and their light was just now arriving. 

It felt like space was hanging over him, the Garden of Eden being grabbed from the Earth by an invisible hand and lifted into the true astral void. You couldn’t describe space as empty or black, there was the presence or a stellar celestial being or the glitzy colors of a galaxy an impossible distance away. The sight of seeing his creation nearly brought Crawly to tears. 

Being an ex-heavenly being, Crawly knew that the Earth was a sphere. He understood gravity, he understood atmosphere and oxygen, he understood that the ssss things he’d made were very distant. The closest things were the sun and the other planets in the solar system, and the moon. He couldn’t see the sun, for obvious reasons, and still staring at the blue nebula, the moon wasn’t in his peripheral vision. His eyes couldn’t spot any of the planets that he knew existed nearby, a result of their orbits, and his snake eyes being more even less well-suited for looking into the vast deep of outer space. 

However, Crawly knew EXACTLY what was out there. Massive spheres of gas, burning, held together by gravity and God’s Will, or something. Other planets, physical places to walk and exist on on human corporations. Not that Adam and Eve would go there, obviously, but if Crawly couldn’t visit the stars, on account of his job on Earth, not in the atmosphere. He really hoped, one day, humanity would be able to visit his stars, for him. He wanted another look at- stars! That was the word. STARS! Crawly had made stars! 

And, and, Crawly had helped with everything out in space. He’d built so much of it, and he was blessed proud of it! Stars, illuminating the garden, even if there wasn’t much light in general, there was still more there because he had built them. Crawly also liked to think that they were free of Heaven and God’s ridiculous rules, even if they had been punished for it. They would be better off. He had done that. He’d freed Adam and Eve, he’d built the stars…

Please wonder. Please question. Please be curious, Crawly hoped. Adam and Eve were destined to be fruitful and multiply. Hopefully one of them would send passing thoughts to the stars. 

--------------------------

1957

Public education was always in interesting idea. He’d clearly never been in a school to receive an education like he was thinking about now, but he got by, humans never questioned him about his past. If they did, he could lie very smoothly. It had never been an issue, but Crowley thought it would be good to get an insider’s information, receive a child’s education. It would be funny if there was something that the British Government decided was important enough for good patriotic kids who served for King and Country to know, but Crowley, a 6000 year old demon, did not.  Incredible, it was, from the days of feudalism a few short centuries ago to today, with taxpayer-funded education for all the kids to learn their maths and times tables. 

Schooling like this had existed for centuries, developing over time, but Crowley had never imagined things turn out the way they did. Hell said the United States was the Place To Be. The States gave him a sour taste in his mouth, despite promising beginnings. He’d visited twice. Once after electric lights were invented(3) and he didn’t stay long. Crowley supposed it was better than when everyone was dying of the plague and stuffing flowers by their noses to stay immune. Second, in California during the summer in 1941. He didn’t do much, just a few one-on-one temptations for petty theft and fights, but he received a commendation for Korematsu vs United States a few months after the case, several years later. 

Shapeshifting was an ability Crowley had acquired after the Fall. He was above shapeshifting into a child and faking a family, but he’d still like to know what little kids learned. Corrupt them early. If he felt ambitious, he could have some sort of law in place so kids had to learn about something to help corrupt them, though Crowley wasn’t sure what. It would require a lot of effort, though, something he wasn’t feeling up to now. 

Maybe he’d just find a position in a school and watch silently from a corner as a snake. 

Anyway, it was the beginning of an idea. He’d have to hammer it out sometime else. And, he had other business. Not Beelzebub zzemself, but somebody lower in the foodchain had determined the States was the place to be. Things like child labor and the Great Depression had been good business. He could do a lot of work there. And that plan about ‘putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade’ had promise. 

Something bibliophilic and prim kept him from being in the right place, right time to take credit for God Bless America’s sins. For the Arrangement, of course. Got to keep your hereditary enemy in check. Aziraphale had settled in London almost four hundred years ago, and Crowley liked the place. He didn’t need to go anywhere. 

The events of the war still fizzled in Crowley’s memory. He hadn’t visited either of the places the americans bombed in Japan, but he had visited the country in the 1620s. He went to pay his respects after the bombs in Japan in 1947 after the war ended. 

And, so, he’d headed to some school in London, miracled up an ID for one Anthony Crowley, with a PhD in childcare or something, to be a guidance counselor, just as the school year started in September. A month later, Sputnik 1 was launched. 

It wasn’t like Crowley spent a lot of time thinking about the atmosphere of the Earth. Of course not. There were five layers or something, the stratosphere weather one, a couple in the middle, and then the exosphere, where the air thinned out more than 6,000 miles from the Earth’s surface. There wasn’t a specific place where there Was Air and Wasn’t Air, it just thinned out until you lacked the ability to breathe. He knew this mostly because of an education of Earth given to him in Heaven, which he recalled vaguely, and sitting in on a lecture in a university. That’s where he got the 6,000 mile statistic.(4)

He’d love to say he did incredible, in depth research by going in a plane or hot air balloon, or better yet, with his wings, but since the Fall, his wings had always bothered him. He’d learned to not have his wings out in Hell after returning from the Garden from his chat with the angel, some demon had attacked him for ‘showing off’ his intact wings. They had turned black, as standard during the Fall. He was lucky, other demons lose their wings entirely, or were reduced to little ones that couldn’t fly. Crawly was feebly going to ask someone to groom his, and in return he’d groom theirs, because discrepancies in their wings proved to feel bothersome and sometimes painful. 

Vulnerabilities were bad in Hell. Crawly was taught this very quickly. Luckily, he was assigned to Actively Permanent Earth Assignment- Human Temptation and Soul Corruption, so the only one he would have to worry about be attacked by for being different was humans. 

But, a space launch, something piercing the atmosphere from inside it and going out instead of the other way around was astounding. There were very few things that could say they’d broken the Earth’s atmosphere, that had started on Earth. Meteor showers and all gave the title of ‘breaking Earth’s atmosphere’ a bit less impressive than it sounds. Nonetheless, as the children chattered about the upcoming Halloween at the end of the month when they should be memorizing vocabulary words (Crowley was hiding as a snake from the ceiling, listening intently to conversation in a class of second-years), they were also getting the demon to think about Halloween. 

And, suddenly, Crowley had an idea. 

Crowley tried to be an optimist. His usual problem was turning from a human to a snake when he was overwhelmed or processing a lot of things, but he was already in his snake form, so he wasn’t going to do that. It was unlikely he’d accidentally turn human, because turning human required concentration. Despite that, Crowley calmed himself down in the vents above a classroom in the form of a snake, because he had wiggled around excitedly when he had gotten an idea. 

He wiggled back through the vents and into Mr. Crowley’s office. A venus flytrap sat in a pot on his desk, a gift from a student who he would be a guidance counselor to this year. He wondered if she gave all her teachers venus flytraps at the beginning of each school year, or it had just been the one with sunglasses and a snake tattoo, but he liked the plant. Whether she had or not, she seemed perfect for his plan. She was that type without a lot of friends, not much to do, and could be easily swayed to something with a sparkly sign. She had already somehow found that plants were something she liked, and venus flytraps specifically. If she liked ‘scary’ plants that ate insects, she’d be a perfect candidate for his plan- acting as a substitute one day and teaching kids how to use a ouija board. 

Bless, maybe he should have just become a substitute teacher. They would be given the things the kids needed to learn. He’d have to find another time and place to do it, but the substitute teacher thing was a good idea. 

The girl, her name was Annabelle, was in year six, and had some odd fondness and likely a place to grow venus flytraps, unless she bought Mr. Crowley a venus flytrap. Either way, she’d be perfect to make into a student of the occult. She’d probably confide in it due to her trouble making friends and acquaintances in school. The pieces were falling together. Now, the question was, what class of hers to make the teacher take a leave of absence from? Probably whatever class she liked the least, she’d hate to see her favorite teacher replaced. They’d already been in school for a month, she must know who the teachers she’d liked most were.

Only problem was, who did she like most? Crowley wasn’t the type to put feelings in people’s minds like Hastur, the whole point of temptations is that you make something look good, and the human makes the choice. Forcing them to do something defeated the whole purpose. It wasn’t a temptation, it was a command. Crowley rather liked humans’ whole Free Will thing. He couldn’t go around putting thoughts in her mind, or changing what teachers she liked. He wasn’t even doing the substitute teacher thing, right? His train of thought was a jumbled mess. 

This was going to take some work and effort. Maybe he should have just forced the Main Office in the school to include a unit about hedonism, or something. 

The schedule in the school had changed during the summer, unexpectedly. Crowley had joined, and he had the schedules altered to add a study hall. Maybe he’d start a club about the occult, get people excited for the Unholy And Evil Holiday That Was Halloween, and he’d have plenty of tempted souls by the time either he got bored of school or the project was a bust. He’d wind up doing something later. 

The plan was set up, and Crowley went to speak to Anabelle one of the days before the fourth of October, 1957. Although this wasn’t the only date like this, Crowley looked at his life as a series of Befores and Afters. There was Before the Fall, and After the Fall. Before meeting Aziraphale. Before realizing he could lie on reports. Before he realized he was looking for Aziraphale in the thousand years between Eden and Noah’s Ark...and After. Before Christ and After. 

Before ‘Holy Water Insurance’ and after. 

There was a new event, although those listed do include quite a bit more. Before humans breached the atmosphere with Sputnik 1 and After. 

Sputnik 1 is usually a footnote, nowadays, no, not a footnote, it does get some mention, it marked the beginning of the Space Race, the way we affectionately refer to it as, so it’s not a footnote, but it’s otherwise hardly mentioned. Believe me, it’s worth the google. 

Since our current 1957 Crowley isn’t aware of things that get more attention, he qualifies Sputnik 1 as a significant event. Maybe, one day, humans will go in their little spaceships like Sputnik, fitted for human life, like good movies from earlier in the decade, where humans travelled the stars...here the humans were, right now, with a real space probe. 

Even if Crowley couldn’t see his creations without a telescope, maybe some of those cosmonauts would. Humans were smart, with maths and science, they’d figure it out. Something more pessimistic in Crowley said they’ll figure out mutually assured destruction first. 

He didn’t like thinking about that. 

Alone in his office, sitting in his designer chair, which he preferred to stand on dramatically instead of sit on, he put his hand to his mouth to stop himself from crying because humans were going to see the stars. 

----------------------------

Summer 1958

Occult Club was a bust. Crowley expected that, honestly, but it hurt now that it was the end of the year and he’d hardly accomplished anything. Well, he says he didn’t accomplish anything- he acted as a substitute multiple times throughout the year and ignored the lesson plans, teaching kids how oujia boards worked and the pleasures of spending other people’s money. He also had an incredible Halloween, where he dressed up as dragon and tempted children to steal candy from other children. They wound up giving him most of it, so Crowley was satisfied. He had also made progress with Anabelle, who had moved at the end of the year after summer started. She had gotten interested in the occult, but also into snakes and reptiles because Mr. Crowley had a pet snake. That’s why he had the tattoo, no other reason. 

The last day of school, Crowley, with no mortal possessions other than a venus flytrap he’d acquired at the beginning of the year, stayed in the building to cause trouble with other teachers who were moving their supplies. He’d accidentally convinced one of the teachers in an unexpected therapy session to tell her husband that she didn’t want kids, she’d been scared to the whole time because her husband wanted them. He wished his coworker the best and helped her move things to her car. 

He waved as she drove off, and looked back up at the sky, which was dotted in stars. On the first night he’d been on Earth, there weren’t constellations. Well, they existed, but they hadn’t been identified. Crowley sat down in the grass for a little while and stared at the sky.  The school was pretty far from any major city, so there wasn’t any light pollution to get in the way. Just him, the atmosphere, and his creation hanging above him. 

--------------------

March 1969

Hell had never really given up on the Move to the States! Thing, and he couldn’t exactly tell them that moving to the United States was quite literally the last thing he ever wanted to do. One, humans were sinful enough, and the States were a perfect example of how humans could do horrible things, without demonic temptations. And, Aziraphale didn’t live in the States. Oh, and another reason, God had a stupid american accent and he refused to live anywhere where he’d constantly hear people who sounded as annoying and stuck-up as Her. 

Reading the words manned spacecraft in big black letters in newspaper headings and on telly hadn’t sunk in when he first read them, but he thought for a couple of hours and stared at his television set when he woke up two weeks ago. Crowley, being a very odd snake-demon-man, liked to avoid the cold months by sleeping them off. He didn’t always do it, but he liked to escape the cold sometimes and ‘hibernate’ from November to February.  The BBC had done a TV special recapping the events of all human activities in space, from intercontinental missiles in 1957 to the recent Apollo 8 entering the moon’s gravitational orbit. 

Humans were gonna see the stars. Please don’t let me down, Crowley hoped. Humans, you’re so smart. Use that big brain of yours for something productive, something good. 

Despite the bit with the apple, Crowley didn’t like to think of himself as some loving hand guiding humanity with every step. He was more like their uncle that gave them a million-pound check and told them to have fun. 

So, March 1969, Crowley staring at the telly he had in his flat. Watching an odd news broadcast recapping the history of the space race, even if it wasn’t called that yet. One of his projects in 1967 was still paying off, so he wasn’t in a hurry to do any work, he didn’t need to jump out of bed and do anything. When the helpful recap by the BBC finished, he flicked through some channels. He could go and do a temptation on some unsuspecting human, but he didn’t feel like it, and it was still cold. 

Something else he could do was reassure his presence to Aziraphale, show that he hadn’t killed himself with the holy water. Not that Crowley had even thought about it, but Aziraphale had been so scared. They’d exchanged phone numbers in 1941, Crowley dropping Aziraphale off, and doing everything he could to get Aziraphale to invite him inside. He’d turned the car off, got out of it, and rested his arms on the top and continued the awkward conversation they’d had in the car. It hadn’t worked, and Aziraphale gave him the strangest, most pained look, and headed inside the bookshop, closing the door. 

So much for olive branches. 

Of course he’d still hold a hand out for Aziraphale if he ever decided to turn up. But Crowley wasn’t going to wait for him to come crawling back. Crowley had an immortal life to live, people to tempt, movies to watch and places to be. He absolutely would be Aziraphale’s friend again if the angel wanted. 

He wasn’t, absolutely wasn't going to focus on you go to fast for me, Crowley. 

He’d be going slow by staying away from him, but leaving his hand out, right? Thinking about his, uh, affectionately named Driving Speed Problem was upsetting, so Crowley decided he didn’t want to think about it. 

Cool! Crowley wanted a new thing to think about. Something that wasn’t Aziraphale. Clearly failing at this, Crowley walked over to his safe, looking at the numbers 4 and 0, the two numbers he’d need to hit to open the safe. The tartan-patterned holy water thermos was in there.(5)

No. I don’t want to think about Aziraphale. Maybe I should do some temptations- that got him thinking about the Arrangement. 

Breathing heavily, and growling like dog, Crowley impulsively kicked over a potted plant in anger. The ceramic pot shattered, and the soil in it spilled, the recently planted seeds spilling out as well. Seeing the result of his little tantrum, the anger that had built up in Crowley dissipated like smoke in the wind. He snapped, and it was a pristine, perfect little ceramic-potted plant. The pieces disappeared and the soil was perfect now. Crowley would love to say his miracle to fix the plants also got rid of the sudden tears in his eyes or solved the problem if his little tantrum. 

Very unbecoming of a demon, Crowley sighed, the weight of the world clearly on his shoulders. He wiped his eyes, he hadn’t cried much. Human corporations were cruel and swift, so Crowley’s head started to hurt. He decided, very masculinely and in a way that didn’t compromise his cool-guy look, that he didn’t need aspirin or need to try miracling it away.(6)

Ever since the Driving Speed Incident, and Crowley ‘decided’ he ‘didn’t need Aziraphale’, although he was 100% willing to be his friend again, Crowley decided to be his own demon. He had a bookshelf of books he liked, some of them gifts from Aziraphale, some of them gifts from author friends, some stolen, some purchased. Two years ago, Crowley put the books in storage, and made his bookshelf another wine cabinet. There was wine you didn’t need to refrigerate (Crowley thought) so he kept his non-refrigerating wine in the ex-bookshelf. 

Books and reading were for nerds who liked books and reading. Crowley wasn’t a nerd who liked books and reading. Not very demonic. 

Something that was demonic, and it wasn’t because Crowley made the stars in Heaven, and he liked outer space, no sir, something that was demonic because it might lead to WW3 and could do plenty of temptations for him, was space exploration. 

The astronomy-enthusiast demon bought a ticket to Orlando, the closest city in Florida to the Kennedy Space Center that very same week. It would be his third time to America, and he was a demon on a mission. Not one to pass up an opportunity like this, Crowley very helpfully informed Hell of his upcoming trip to the States. Pencil-pushers in Hell could probably check off a box on a checklist, and Crowley had an idea. He wasn’t moving there, but a plan was forming in his mind. 

Two Weeks Later, Mid-March 1969

ORLANDO, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES

The snake-demon-man should have considered himself lucky he’d only visited the warmer parts of America. California, Georgia, and now Florida. He’d always fancied the idea of visiting New York, especially since he received a commendation for the chaos caused by the Prohibition. He didn’t like the city until the country allowed alcohol again, but since the 21st amendment, he hated the States slightly less. 

The point was, the three states he’d visited now, were some of the warmer ones. Despite the time being March, it was always agreeable temperatures. He’d struck up conversation with some american on the plane, and they’d said to him some meaningless Fahrenheit garbage about seventy degrees even during the winter. He resisted the urge to make fun of him for using such a poor system of temperature measurement, but he smiled and thanked the man. 

Look, Crowley thought. If it is seventy degrees outside, everything is on fire. Nothing was on fire when he left the plane, but being a demon, fire still on his mind, made one of the wheels catch fire unexpectedly by the time everyone had already left. It would cause some delays and people would be tempted into Wrath. See? It all works out. 

A bit sad to leave his beloved Bentley behind, Crowley had assured himself the temporary absence of it would be better than the trouble of moving it to a foreign country for a temporary visit. He stole a car from long-term parking (he didn’t feel like talking to anybody today to get a rental. The plane had drained him of energy for social interactions for things as horrible as humans.((It’s always planes that show the best and worst in humans, innit?)) Having to hear another person talk to him today might make him snap.) and so the demon made his way to Kennedy Space center. 

The car he’d stolen had personal items left in there. Crowley prided himself on his ability to drive, unaware most of the work was done because that’s how Crowley expected cars to work. He would just make his car (any car, really) drive magically as he took a nap in the backseat, but he liked the freeing feeling of driving. It was a middle-finger to Hell, in a way. Today, however, Crowley did feel like taking a nap in the backseat. Well, I say backseat, more like passenger’s seat. He climbed into the seat on the left and was very surprised to see the steering wheel on the passenger’s side. Right. American car.(7) Somebody had said to him american cars were screwy.

One of the personal items left in the car was a newspaper, which Crowley read as his stolen car fermented in Orlando road traffic. It drove itself to the Kennedy Space Center, ignoring any obstacles in it’s path. Crowley miracled up a newspaper from home (London) when he finished up the american one and read curiously about the transition to the third Doctor on that show on telly he’d heard about. The american newspaper had also included a section on the cancellation of Star Trek. He’d watched it since it came out, but he hadn’t watched Doctor Who. He had heard of it, though. It was supposed to be some kid’s historical show. Sounded dumb. 

Kennedy Space Center. Something Crowley appreciated about humans was their ability to decide that something was somebody else’s problem. Crowley paraded up and down the halls of the imposing white building, an ID badge for the nonexistent job of “Apollo Project Upper Transfer Manager”. He wondered if he should do an american accent, and he’d tried to do one in the men’s bathroom in the mirror, but failed utterly. He stopped after that. Crowley didn’t feel like being embarrassed by doing an accent in an empty bathroom in Kennedy Space Center, he had a job to do. Before leaving the bathroom and theatrically readjusting his tie, he tried one more line in a failed american accent, thinking about a movie he’d watched: “Get your stinking paws off me you d- oh, no, I can hardly do that.” and “You maniacs! You blew it up!” before succumbing to embarrassed laughter, dropping the accent halfway through and giving up.(8)

Movies, Crowley had determined one time, were one of humans’ best inventions. 

Speaking of movies, and maybe american accents, Aziraphale could do a scarily accurate one. Crowley had suggested being ‘Not Mr. Fell’ as a way to scare off customers, in 1803, when Aziraphale got his first not-customer. Aziraphale realized he didn’t want to sell his books, and having a bookshop was counter intuitive to this sentiment, but he’d already gone through the trouble of making it a bookshop. It wasn’t like humans were required to buy books, so Aziraphale would just make sure, on the odd occasion a human tries to make a purchase, that they don’t. Simple enough. 

No. Crowley was not going to think about Aziraphale. He was his own demon, about to pull off the temptation of a lifetime, sometime before the americans put a man on the moon. 

“Mr. Crowley. Nice to meet you.” A man had extended his hand. Coming back to reality, standing in the middle of the hallway, Crowley shook the hand of the gruff-sounding man in front of him. Crowley had left the bathroom and stumbled around, looking for someplace important. He hadn’t had a specific idea of what he was going to do when he got to the Space center, just that it should be enough to get Hell off his back. 

Another thing that Crowley liked to think, was that he knew how certain types of people were, and this was to his advantage as a demon, a tempter, a creature of sin, who was in awe of all the fancy technology in the building. It’d be a shame if a group like this wouldn’t be able to do the projects they wanted. A big group of smart minds in one place. 

Maybe the terminology should have been ‘cursing’ humans, because as much as he tempted humans into doing bad things to corrupt their souls, he also often did a lot of curses- cursing the bathrooms empty of toilet paper, which pissed people off and often made them late to places when the situation was dealt with. Making them lose their keys, the little things. 

The man was very polite, and he laughed at a couple of Crowley’s jokes, told him he had a sexy accent, and may have been flirting with the demon. As lunchtime rolled around, he talked about how his father had fought in both of the wars, and it felt like World War 3 was just around the corner. They did bomb drills every week at his son’s school, as if the radiation wasn’t going to get you if you hid under the table. 

Every day, for the whole month, Crowley showed up at the Space Center and clocked in, 9-5. He checked into a hotel, because you can’t plan something as important as Crowley’s current idea with six hours of sleep. 

Well, Crowley said he was coming up with something. He had a dumb little notebook where he scribbled things into, including doodles of planets and stars. Words like tempt people into wrath by destroying projects?? Causing power-outs -flat tires to important people??

Ideas like that. Crowley could technically do worse things to slow down the project, he could tempt some of the workers to sleep with each other and hope that a jealous housewife kills in revenge, he could plant a fake soviet spy, since americans were so concerned about their size-measuring competition. Crowley could do all manner of horrible thong and curse the project, and people would definitely sin along the way. -But he didn’t want to. Beelzebub had suggested to ‘bring more of those atom-bomb thingzzz to zzpace and drop zzem from the zzzky!” 

Nuclear threat sounded promising, but a lot of effort. Although, war with nuclear weapons now would mean Armageddon, though Crowley never pictured humans doing it without an antichrist. Something he remembered from yet another brochure he’d acquired, a brochure acquired in 1000, to celebrate the (rough) last thousand years of Heaven’s snivelling and miserable existence. The Earth would exist for six thousand years, and it shall end in fire and flame. The antichrist would be sired, and probably be able to use his powers on his eleventh birthday. He’d start armageddon, Hell would defeat those harp-pluckers up in Heaven, and it would be fire and torture for all the dead human souls.

So...Crowley would know if the antichrist was born yet, right? Had Hell not told him? He needed time before the end of the world, he had to unload long-term stocks, do a couple of things on his bucket list, lots of things. Unless Hell had told him the antichrist was born and he just forgot.

Uhh...can we mark that down as a possibility? ‘The antichrist has been born, but I just forgot.’ Crowley considered the possibility of that. Low chance, he determined. He was fairly sure the antichrist wasn’t born yet. 

The realization that Crowley didn’t want to do any temptations, that he wanted everything to go right, for humans to land on the moon came at the end of March. George Victor, the friend, had invited him for a drink at a bar after work. Hesitantly, Crowley accepted. The only reason being because american beer wasn’t as good as british beer. Nothing else to do with drinking or what Crowley thought about or what he reminisced about when he saw a good 200-year-old chateauneuf du pape. 

Crowley’s work at NASA continued. 

Some, maybe most of his time, when he wasn’t ‘working’ was spent sleeping. He’d very much liked to have slept for another fifty years after the war and working for British Intelligence had been exhausting. Not that he regretted it, but it was exhausting. 

Since Florida wasn’t in the same spot as Britain, you could see different stars when you sat outside on a clear night. Maybe he should have visited the States sooner, you could see this one collection of stars that he’d never seen with his naked eye on Earth before. Crowley was lying on the top of his stolen car, staring at the sky. Did the people he’d stolen the car from want it back? Likely, they expected to have their car back when they returned home. Where were they visiting, Crowley wondered? Orlando must be their home, or at least the closest airport. 

Crowley wanted to go home. A month of work at NASA and he hadn’t done anything. Along with his goal of accomplishing some sort of temptation while he was there, and getting dangerously close to telling his friend about Aziraphale and his life ‘back home in England’, things hadn’t turned out the way he wanted. 

In an impulse decision, deciding he had nothing to show for himself, Crowley erased George Victor’s memory of him. George had lamented his life to Crowley, about how he and his girlfriend had gotten into a big fight, broke up, and didn’t talk for months. As much as Crowley didn’t want to think about Aziraphale- he knew he couldn’t stay away forever. Crowley drove back to Orlando, parked the car back where he’d found it, cursed cars with steering wheels on the left, and got a flight back to London-Heathrow. 

Well, technically, Crowley did have something to show for himself, but he wasn’t sure it would work. George had made a comment about how landing on the moon could backfire, it might be a show of dominance to other countries at the risk of pissing them off, and the nuclear bombs might start falling again. Crowley was fairly sure that if Apollo was successful, it wouldn’t be seen like that, but there was always this fear about it. 

“Maybe you’re thinking about it the wrong way. Maybe the States need to be more aggressive. America should claim the moon for themselves, put the flag on the surface or something.” 

Not that Crowley thought it would go anywhere, but George Victor must’ve told somebody else before Crowley wiped George Victor’s memory. Crowley would just have to wait to see it came to fruition. He hoped not, the idea of the americans ‘claiming’ the moon seemed odd, but he’d just have to wait. 

JULY 15th, 1969, LONDON

A flight back to London, of course, and Crowley had learned some stuff about astronomy during his time, which was better than having gotten nothing done. He flattened some people’s tires before he left, a fantastically demonic and sinful act. 

In a bar, thinking about how a temptation had gone wrong in June, Crowley mumbled to himself and looked around the building. He’d gone to see a movie earlier that day, and it felt like the movie was screaming out to him, TALK TO AZIRAPHALE. Maybe something had reminded him of George Victor. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get the angel out of his thoughts. 

Being a mature and responsible demon, Crowley hid those thoughts deep down and tried not to think anymore about Aziraphale. 

JULY 16TH, 1969, CROWLEY’S FLAT

Watering your plants while irritable wasn’t fun, Crowley almost wound up talking to himself in his empty flat. He kept turning the telly on and off, seeing if there was any news about the moon launch. When the time came, Crowley sat very still, on his uncomfortable couch, and watched the broadcast. He was completely silent, snakeskin boots on the couch, hugging a pillow. Sunglasses off. 

Crowley had dreams about making the stars in Heaven that night, all those years ago. 

JULY 20TH 1969

Any available telly had been crowded around almost every hour since the launch a couple of days ago. Usually, any bar that Crowley went to would be filled with loud chatter, but it was all hushed whispers as the BBC reported on three tellies in the building how the mission had gone so far, showed interviews from american scientists at NASA, and had a feature about the personal lives of all of the astronauts. 

Poor footage from Apollo 11 was being shown. The talking got louder as time went on. Crowley was sitting in the Dirty Donkey, a pub he wasn’t a stranger in. Impulsively, Crowley rushed to a telephone box across the street and dialed Aziraphale’s number. 

“Crowley?”

“Aziraphale, where are you? Actually, doesn’t matter. Find a telly. Any telly. Just a close one. You live in Soho, there must be one in a nearby. I don’t care if you need to break into someone’s house, but you need to find a telly.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand-”

“Aziraphale.”

“Okay. I’ll find a telly. What channel would I be looking at? I still don’t understand what I’m going to be watching.”

The demon in the phonebox took a deep breath. “Find the BBC, it won’t be hard. It’s the moon landing.”

“Moon landing?”

“Yes, moon landing!”

There’s some silence. 

“I’ll find a television set, dear boy, and call you back.”

“Wait!-”

Aziraphale hangs up. 

That hurt. Crowley walked back across the street, and sat down in a seat. Quiet as a mouse, Crowley watched the start of the landing at The Dirty Donkey. The nearest phone was the telephone box across the street, so he didn’t know if Aziraphale was watching it at all. 

Entirely captivated by the low-res footage, Crowley didn’t acknowledge the hand on his shoulder. “Hey.” 

Aziraphale.

“Mind if I join you?” This startled Crowley, suddenly looking up. Everyone in the bar shushed him, and Crowley patted the seat next to him welcomingly. 

“I don’t mind at all. Sit down.”

----------------------------

1- “I’ll talk about this later. Hang tight. “

2- “Relatively. Couple of hundred astronomical units.”

3- “He hadn’t had any influence on Thomas Edison. Humans and electricity were a match made...somewhere.”

4- “ Heaven doesn't use measurements as stupid as miles.”

5- “Crowley was under the impression Aziraphale had never lied to him. There were moments like “We’re not friends!” or “I’m fine.” but Aziraphale usually said it in a way that was obvious he was lying. He would be stressed, or cold, and very unlike himself. But Crowley was 100% sure Aziraphale didn’t lie to him about important things. He had 100% certainty the water in the thermos was holy. This assumption (the first one) was wrong, Aziraphale had lied to Crowley with a straight face in the past and Crowley totally believed him. Aziraphale did feel bad about lying. Not because lying was wrong, but because he was lying to Crowley.”

6- “Crowley didn’t expect miracles to work on the headache. Therefore, they didn’t. He still tried, but he never expected it to work. Do the math.”

7- “You may be asking, if Crowley expected the steering wheel to be on the right, why didn’t the car behave accordingly? Some things are beyond demonic magic because they’re genuinely that horrible. This is a common theme in the United States. American things being ‘genuinely that horrible.’”

8- “Planet of the Apes is still, to this day, one of Crowley’s favourite movies. He doesn’t like it more than any of the James Bond movies, though. 21st century Crowley happens to like Tony Stark.”