Chapter Text
*****
The Bentley, London, the road to Norwich, and back again
2022
*****
The fourth day after the world might as well have ended, the Bentley was still playing Love of my Life.
It had started around 8:33 PM the day of, as the sun was setting and Crowley was driving out past the M25. The first time, he cut it off before the intro had even finished. The second, he threatened. Thirty minutes on down the road when it came on again and refused to be silenced, he snapped the dial off the stereo, and threw it into the floorboard.
Fifteen minutes after that, he pulled onto the shoulder to heal the stereo, and cry against the wheel in the dark. The Bentley was kind enough to find a volume that drowned him out.
On the second day, Crowley drove round and round the M25. Rather than hail the great beast, he spent the day in perpetual cursing of his car.
If anyone had bothered to ask the Bentley—and if, indeed, it had had the ability to answer outside of song—it might have said there were times Crowley needed to argue, and times he needed to listen, and this was both. It might have also said it did not appreciate the threat of removal of its bullet hole stickers—not after Crowley had gone to such trouble to give them as a gift.
After twelve failed CDs, thirty failed song requests, and a good deal of yelling, Crowley was tired. He pulled off, and laid down across the seats, and didn’t sleep. For a few hours, the car was quiet.
Love of my Life returned at sunrise on the third day.
Crowley drank a bottle of Talisker, and set out to drive toward Norwich. He very, very carefully did not think of what Aziraphale would have had to say about him driving in that state—which means, of course, that he thought of almost nothing else.
Somewhere along the road between Cambridge and Norwich, Crowley stopped, and went into a church. The Catholic church of Saint John of the Cross had been run by Father McKinnen since 1980. Most of his days in such a rural parish were uneventful, which was precisely why he could never forget the days that were. To be fair, most priests wouldn’t soon forget an angel and a demon appearing to help find a lost little girl.
Crowley stayed in the church long enough that the Bentley inched toward the courtyard at a slow creep. It wasn’t nervous (it was), but well enough in tune with its master to know that when he came back—because of course he was coming back—his feet would hurt, and it would be better if he only had to limp so far from the door.
When he did limp back, the door opened for him, Love of my Life spilling out to startle sparrows out of the garden bushes. Rather than get in, Crowley sat in the gravel until his feet stopped throbbing, door open, head tilted back onto the seat. From the uneven shake in his chest and the distinct lack of yelling, he was probably listening. It was, after all, his favorite song.
Freddie Mercury wrote Love of my Life in the summer of 1975. Most Queen fans know that.
He did not, however, write it in July at the three week writing session with his bandmates that would ultimately produce the rest of A Night at the Opera—at least, not fully.
The majority of the song that became Love of my Life was written in June, at Freddie’s Stafford Terrace home in Kensington, while he provided safe haven for a lover he’d first met in 1970. At the time, Crowley had been making a fresh attempt to get over 1967.
It didn’t work in 1975, either.
*****
Kensington, London
1975
*****
“—and I didn’t say anything, really, it’s not like I propositioned him in the street—”
Underneath Crowley’s ranting, the music never stopped, smooth and ambling as a stream. The notes were old, almost classical—the pang in Crowley’s chest of if he could get over himself, he’d love this came and went.
“—and he’s not a prude—well he is, but he isn’t; you wouldn’t find him in a club today, but that gentleman’s club in 1883, I know he was seeing a man—”
Crowley stopped, and the music didn’t. From where he stood, bottle and glass in hand, the line of Freddie’s shoulders didn’t even change, still fluid and easy as his hands moved over the keys, seconds stretching while Crowley tried to make up his mind on the prospect of a small touch of altered memory. His thoughts were muddy with whiskey and hurt, layered over knowledge. Five years he’d been seeing Freddie, here and there. Five years, and Crowley hadn’t always been perfectly careful.
The phrase played out, and Freddie’s hands paused on the keys, though he didn’t turn.
“Go on, darling—or are we still pretending I don’t know you aren’t human?”
There was peculiarity in being seen. For Crowley, it almost never felt comfortable—outside of the bookshop, at best, it settled something like sandpaper against his skin, all the little ticks of mistrust and fear most humans found it impossible to hide around him. Even when they thought they were, even when they weren’t truly afraid—the hindbrain knew things the conscious brain didn’t, and eyes like his meant danger. Plenty in a snake, worse in something that should have been a man.
The night he and Freddie met, they’d fucked in a hotel, and Crowley had worn his glasses. He’d worn them when they met up again a few months later, and again a few weeks after that. Most of the time, he wore them here at the house, too, but there had been moments—they were intimate, and he hadn’t been perfect, and Freddie had seen.
Beyond a few pointed comments that weren’t actually all that pointed, he’d never said a word. He’d never flinched away, either—not even in his sleep.
Crowley crossed to the piano, and made to settle the bottle on the edge before a quiet sound of disapproval stopped him. He poured a little more instead, and settled the bottle onto the floor beneath the piano, finally meeting Freddie’s eyes only after he’d leaned onto the top. Of all that wasn’t allowed to touch the piano, Crowley was.
“I take it you’re alright with the not pretending?” Crowley said.
Beneath Freddie’s fingers, the music bloomed to life again, as warm as his smile.
“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have kept letting you in, would I? I really don’t know who you think you’re fooling; you’re terribly obviously something.”
“Oh, something, am I? What sort of something?”
“Not a vampire,” Freddie said. Always soft spoken, he made even that non-accusation sound gentle. His teeth flashed when he grinned. “You’ve had plenty of chances to bite me and you’ve never even tried.”
“You take that back; I’ve bitten you plenty.”
His laughter smoothed over the sore places, sticking to Crowley’s insides like balm on a burn. The damage under the skin stayed, but for a little while, everything felt cooler, and softer, and easier to bear.
“Not a siren, you can’t sing—don’t make that face; you know you can’t.”
“Not next to you; next to you no one can.” In Crowley’s opinion, the phrase voice of an angel was used far too liberally, but every now and then, the compliment was deserved. Deserved, and beyond—though to be fair, Crowley couldn’t remember the singing well enough to know how good it had been. “What sort of monster am I, then?”
“I don’t think you’re a monster at all,” Freddie said. The notes softened, slowing and trailing again, picking up at a point that sounded close to where he’d started, the song unfinished. “You’ve had every chance to hurt me if you wanted; you never have. You talk about time as if it’s nothing—this man who you say isn’t an ex but is clearly the love of your life, it’s been almost a decade since he turned you down and for you it might as well have happened last week. I get the feeling you do more observing than you do interacting, and I can’t imagine why you broke that rule for me. I can’t imagine how long you’ve lived for almost a third of my life to feel like days. How…small it all has to seem—”
“No, not that. You aren’t small to anyone; certainly not to me.”
Crowley finished his glass in one go, set it down with the bottle before he joined Freddie on the bench, sideways so he could rest his back against Freddie’s side, his head on his shoulder. He was taller, but at a slouch he could make it work, and it let him think with a bit of peace in a silence that didn’t feel uncomfortable.
Near 6,000 years, and what he was had never gotten easier to say. It was one thing for Aziraphale to reveal himself—almost everyone welcomed the presence of an angel.
No, better to let Freddie form his own ideas.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley murmured. It was a fractional answer, but the only one he felt ready to give. “His name’s Aziraphale, and he’s been my best friend for longer than you’d believe—you can say you’d believe it, and fair, you might, but it’d shock you.”
“And in all that time, you’ve never told him how you feel.” It wasn’t a question, and still, Crowley bristled.
“It’s not about how I feel; he knows how I feel—”
“With that attitude, it’s a good thing I’m writing you a song, isn’t it?” The tune shifted again, a flourish that was undeniably classical. “From everything you’ve told me, if he’s going to listen to it, it’s got to have a more traditional atmosphere—I have to talk to Brian but I think harp overlaid at the first will pull it together.”
Crowley spun around on the bench, properly forward. “You’re writing—this one, that’s for him?” He’d gone for incredulous, but even to his own ears the eagerness was undeniable.
“It’s for him. I’ve wanted to do it for awhile, but I knew it’d have to be right. Here, listen to it properly—"
Freddie could command a crowd like it was his birthright; Crowley had seen it happen. There was magic in him on stage, undoubtedly, but it was different, hearing him at home. He was different with the band, too, but here in his sanctuary, with hush around them and his strong voice so rich and close, stark with only his own playing behind him—there was nothing like it, nothing Crowley had experienced in all his years.
Love of my life,
You’ve hurt me
You’ve broken my heart
And now you leave me
Love of my life
Can’t you see?
Bring it back, bring it back
Don’t take it away from me
Because you don’t know
What it means to me
The notes trailed, began again, then fell silent. “Obviously, it’s not nearly finished, but as a start—”
“It’s gorgeous,” Crowley murmured. Beautiful, wrenching, full of the feeling of watching Aziraphale walk away from him, and utterly unfair to have been written by a man who let Crowley into his home and his bed, knowing he’d never keep him. Crowley reached out to the keys, his fingers descending through a scale and beyond, until his hand bumped Freddie’s and was caught, and held.
The deep breath he took was wet, but he could blame that on the drink.
“Freddie, why the hell do you let me in? I’m—I’m horrible, I come here and complain to you about him and you never tell me to shut up, you never kick me out.”
“Of course I don’t. Where would you go? The two of you aren’t talking—”
“We’re—” Impossible to describe, to anyone outside the two of them. Strictly speaking, they hadn’t spoken in two years, but that was nothing, nothing at all. “If I called, he’d pick up; we’re talking. If It’s about me being alone—”
“I don’t want you alone, but it’s not just that.” Freddie’s fingers squeezed around his, hard enough to draw Crowley to meet his gaze. The rich brown of his eyes carried a warmth that reminded Crowley of the depths of the earth, deep caverns, unlikely safety. Nothing about him was ever cold. “You don’t have to, but you choose to come here. You come to me because you want to, and that’s all I need to know. Of course I’m going to let you in.”
His earnestness hurt. There was only so long Crowley could look before he had to turn away, tracing instead over the arch of their hands on the keys, the curve of the lid of the piano, the elaborate curls of the cornices on the ceiling. He had come to know this place—not like the bookshop, no, but the thought of never coming back settled in his throat like coal.
“I can’t give you what you deserve,” Crowley said. Their fingers remained tangled. “I can’t. Even if I—even if things weren’t whatever they are or whatever they aren’t with him, I can’t stay any more often than I do. I can’t explain it—I won’t explain it, but you’re safe now, and I won’t put you in danger by drawing attention to where I’m going. That’s not an option.”
“Have I asked you to?”
Crowley pulled away, all the way to his feet. Pacing was easier.
“You haven’t, but you should. Anyone would if they—you’re writing a song about Aziraphale—you’re involved enough to do that for me, and you have Mary, but there’s no one properly here for you when I’m not, and if I expect to just—stop by and it’s all fine then I am the worst kind of bastard when it’s obvious that you—”
His throat caught. The word itself was always so damned hard to get out. If they were watching, if they heard…
Crowley swallowed, and looked back to the piano. Freddie had turned to face him, and he didn’t look a damn bit like a man about to agree.
Far too much love.
“It’s obvious how you feel about me, and that’s not right.”
Of all things, Freddie’s soft laughter wasn’t what he expected.
“Well, dear, when it’s just as obvious how you feel about me, I’d say we have an arrangement that doesn’t need changing, wouldn’t you? So I’m an afternoon for you—it’s fine, I’m fine. I rather like the thought of being a nice afternoon.”
It was, in a way, perfectly true—Freddie was light and heat, dazzling as sunshine on water, comforting as a bask in the grass.
And, in the grand spread of thousands of years more yet Crowley might have if the world didn’t end, an afternoon would be about right—that didn’t mean he didn’t remember his better days for thousands of years.
He already had so many committed to memory.
Crowley went back to him, stopping between his legs and welcoming the arms that slipped around his waist. He draped his own over Freddie’s shoulders as he leaned in close. The easiness of it all made the lump in his throat ache in a way that made it hard to swallow. All of time and space, and in his memory no one else had ever touched him like it was easy, no one other than this man. The first time Aziraphale touched him, it had seemed hard—after that, it seemed necessary, and that was—
Everything, it was everything. Crowley could never say it wasn’t any more than he could ever scrape the answering need out of the core of his being, but that didn’t take away the wonder in easy. Ease had magic, too.
“Sunday afternoon,” Crowley said. “One of those at the end of summer that feels like it starts in the morning and goes on for ages.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“You are.” Crowley closed the gap, and kissed him.
*****
The first time Crowley heard Love of my Life as a finished piece he was alone in his flat, listening to Side Two of A Night at the Opera first. He listened with his hands pressed to the corner of his desk, studying the phone with an intensity that would have worried it if the poor thing could sense.
It took the rest of the side to decide not to call Aziraphale, and play Side One instead.
This led to his first time hearing Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, which made him laugh and mutter a good natured you wanker so warm it made his plants cautiously contemplate a possible increase in safety—utterly premature, of course.
Crowley’s copy of A Night at the Opera eventually went to live at the bookshop, along with his original VHS copy of Queen at Wembley, released in 1990. His copy is the only one in the world in which he can be glimpsed off stage for just a moment, arms crossed over his chest as he leans against scaffolding for a closer view during Radio Ga Ga. It is also the only copy that includes Love of my Life, which was not included on any other publicly available video recording until 2003.
Crowley only ever watched it once, and the Bentley never plays any of the live versions from Wembley in July of 1986.
Whenever possible, Crowley didn’t like to think about 1986. By his own reckoning, if he’d done more thinking in 1986, 1991 as it stood in his timeline need never have happened.
It was a largely incorrect assumption—in most timelines, a little more observance on his part changed nothing. As a general rule, however, nearly every version of Crowley was very, very good at blaming himself for situations already well and truly outside of his control.
*****
Wembley Stadium, London
1986
*****
The bright twinkle of unadulterated joy in Freddie’s eyes at seeing him in the wings was compliment enough for Crowley to feel wrapped in it, a cushion that made the summer air just a little warmer, a little heavier. The moment draped him around him like a mantle, and Crowley took off his jacket to better feel it—and to better feel him when they met, Freddie’s chest already bare, Crowley’s thin shirt wet with sweat the minute Freddie swept him up into his arms.
Another time, another place, another person and that would have been off putting, but not here, not him. Not when Crowley had been watching and wanting from the minute he took the stage, not after four long months in Birmingham and a trip Downstairs that seemed to have stolen close to three weeks, or far longer if he’d been unlucky. He could barely remember the exact month he’d left, but London had been cold. Time was strange in Hell, but he’d emerged into July, and what a heaven of a welcome it’d been to find that Queen was days away from a show that would undoubtedly be one of the grandest the country had ever seen.
The urge to kiss Freddie was near irrepressible, but Crowley was good at repressing. Rather than give them both too far away, he pulled back, dipping into a low bow, a flourish to his wrist that had someone laughing—it sounded like Brian.
“My Queen—though I’m not sure save the Queen is entirely accurate; you seem have done well enough for yourself.”
“Anthony. You should have called; I’d have gotten you a better view.” If there was meant to be admonishment, there, Freddie hadn’t made enough of an effort. Not really enough of an effort for masking a damn thing, either—and he was good at masking; he’d had to be. Maybe Crowley’d been away too long, or the high of the show had pulled him too far out to shove it all back in—whatever the source, he’d said Crowley’s other name too like an endearment for any confusion. At a smaller venue on a tour all their own, Crowley would have felt safer, but this was fucking Wembley, a flurry of people not quite as loyal milling around at the edges of his vision—
A discreet flick of his fingers, and they’d all forgotten. He was an old friend, and Freddie’d greeted him like one—not with his voice like that, not like he was imagining what it might have been like to lean over the stage and kiss Crowley senseless in the middle of Under Pressure.
Some fantasies, Crowley could read without any reading required. He’d had them himself more than a few times.
“Nah,” the wave of Crowley’s hand took in the dark spaces, open glimpses to the wide stage here and there in patches. “View was fine; I crept around and kept out of the way. Probably better angles than I could have gotten on the ground—not that there was a bad seat in the place; it’s fucking Wembley. You were glorious.”
Glorious, gorgeous. Rock god embodied—and now, looking at Crowley like he wanted to devour him.
For the love of everything, Crowley wanted to be devoured.
“Brian?” Crowley called out in the direction of the fluff of Brian May’s hair he could catch out of the corner of his eye, head tilted back as he downed what was probably half a gallon of water. The sound of breathless acknowledgement he got when he’d finished was answer enough. “We’re catching up; you can take him back in a bit.”
Brian was close, but more importantly, he was safe, the soul of a poet with the solid spine of a protector. He’d guarded Freddie’s secrets for years, Crowley included. Well—the secret of ‘cagey bloke my best mate’s been hung up on for the last 15 years’, at the least. He got the distinct impression sometimes that Brian didn’t actually like him very much, or perhaps liked him against his will, but that was, really, another point in his favor. If he’d had to choose, he’d far prefer the people around Freddie have nothing but disapproval and mistrust for a lover who lit his eyes like that, and never bothered to stick around.
Christ, if he thought too much about that, he’d ruin the mood.
“Come on,” Freddie tossed the cape onto a speaker cabinet. “I think I know where we can get out of the way and catch up—just give me a minute.” A quiet word with Brian, a little rummaging in a guitar case, and then he was leading the way with a look over his shoulder, out of the madness of crew and equipment, the distant roar of the crowd slowly draining from the stadium like a receding flood.
Within the walls of the stadium, Freddie led them to a door marked for Queen, letting Crowley in first to a mid-size room of tile and raised baths before he flipped the bolt, locking the door behind them.
“Suppose this is where the footballers—” was all Crowley got out before he found himself crowded back against the tile, Freddie’s hands coming up to frame his face, and pull him down. It never mattered that Crowley was taller; Freddie was bigger, wider in his chest with absurd strength in his arms that could make Crowley’s mouth water even if he looked too long at a tabloid shot.
He groaned into the kiss, a heady, muzzy relief diffusing through his body down to his toes as he pulled Freddie closer. There was nothing like this in hell—nothing but blasted cold and damp, horrors and hungers that were painful rather than pleasant. This was a burn that anchored him into his bones, that made his body feel like his, and reminded him just how much he liked having one.
“Eight months,” Freddie said in the space between kisses, one hand already untucking Crowley’s already disheveled shirt. “Eight months, and not a word. You haven’t been gone that long in years.”
Eight months. Was that how long it had been? Had he really been in Birmingham four, or was it all blurring together? Trying to draw his mind back from remembering too much about his longer trips Down had its disadvantages.
“You don’t have to worry about me.” Crowley reached between them, deft fingers guiding the snake head of his belt to unhook its fangs with just a nudge of pressure at the jaw. For his hands (and maybe Aziraphale’s, if he ever tried), it was more snake than belt, acquiescing to unhinge itself and drop hard to the floor, peeling his jeans down with it. “I’m fine. Rough time at the job, that’s all.”
“Whatever that might be—” Freddie never pressed, not once, but Crowley could always hear the curiosity, a dark edged wonder that almost, almost wanted to know. “Or you’re getting tired of me.”
“Like hell. Shut your mouth or do something better with it.”
Freddie’s laughter was muffled when he followed through, his mouth closing over the side of Crowley’s throat. The area the man could cover when he wanted was obscene, and it was this or the way he looked with it wrapped around Crowley’s cock that came to mind when the idiots in the press mocked him for his teeth. Vapid morons, the lot of them. So, he was different; he was beautiful—and it didn’t hurt that it helped his range, either. The right combination of body and soul, an instrument the like of which the world had never seen before, and never would again. Utterly, painfully unique.
Shoving down his pants and kicking off his boots with only the barest, subtle miraculous assistance, Crowley moved to wrap his long legs around Freddie’s waist at almost the same moment Freddie moved to lift him, a familiar choreography. He could feel the press of Freddie’s cock already hard behind the soft material of his pants, and the promise of it licked a shock up his spine that had Crowley’s head knocking back against the tile.
“Oh, fuck, Freddie—” I missed you; Hell was awful, and I missed you. Crowley swallowed, and kissed him instead, long and hungry, teeth sharp in tugging his lip when Freddie pulled away.
Freddie’s grip shifted, going one armed—and for fuck’s sake if that wasn’t a blistering turn on—his right hand shoving into his pocket to fish out the unmistakable crinkle of a condom.
Crowley huffed, shaking his head just once before he nuzzled closer, trailing nips along Freddie’s jaw. “No, no, come on; none of that. It’s me; I’m all…monstery and fine. You know I don’t care who you’ve been seeing, long as I’m still one of them when I’m here. Selfish arsehole that I am—” His breath caught as Freddie’s grip tightened, his face for a moment buried close in the hollow of Crowley’s throat.
“You aren’t,” Freddie whispered. “You aren’t a monster, and you aren’t selfish—and if you are a bit selfish, I’ve told you to be. When you’re here, it’s always you. It’s always you when you aren’t.”
In another world, perhaps, Freddie hid his face a moment longer, or his voice bled just a bit heavier.
In this one, he dropped the condom to the floor, and pulled a packet of lube out instead. The prep was rushed, and Crowley could have helped himself out a bit with another almost non-existent miracle, but the very human burn as Freddie pushed into him was, for the moment, something he wanted to savor, a pain that he asked for rather than one he had no say in. Life had been rather full of those, recently.
He clung to broad shoulders and strong arms, nails digging tracks down his skin that had to sting with the sweat, though Freddie only pulled him closer. In the almost privacy of this place, Crowley’s cries echoed off the tile, and the worst worry that hit him was that Brian might have to come up with a stronger alibi.
It was summer, Queen was holding the UK in the palm of their hand, and Crowley was back on earth again, almost home again. Tomorrow, maybe Aziraphale would want a walk in the park, and life would be so fully right again that for awhile, hell couldn’t touch him. The world was amazing.
The irony of ignorance being bliss is often that you can’t tell if it’s ignorance or bliss, not while it’s happening.
*****
Kensington, London
1989
*****
Time was peculiar.
There were great swaths of it Crowley couldn’t remember from the early days, like a vast room with the lights off and furniture he ran into in the dark, unknowing if what clinked in the black was a knife or a key until he reached. Of course, once he did, the whatever it was either cut him or didn’t, and the whole house reset, a fresh labyrinth of mystery. Sometime around the point he shifted from Crawley to Crowley, he’d stopped bumbling around in the dark and given it up for lost. (Largely, mostly. There were moments he looked up at the night sky and felt a fierce longing that could scarcely be described, a deep ache in his wings that pushed him to fly, to not stop until the air was frigid cold and the horizon was made only of stars. No matter the longing, he was by then smart enough not to try—he’d made that mistake before. It didn’t matter, really. He hated the cold anyway.)
For all that he’d lost bits of it, by and large he could feel it slip through the ether around him, strong as a current, formless as wind. He could dip his fingers into it, dam it up or shift the flow, stir a bit until it fell into a shape that didn’t cut the wrong way against his skin. He didn’t do it often—he’d never gotten an official reprimand, never gotten notice of any kind, really, but there seemed to be an alarm bell buried deep within his consciousness that time was to be touched sparingly.
Under his command, utterly outside of it.
It was time that seemed off at Garden Lodge, an eerie pressure on his skin. Crowley hadn’t been to Kensington in six months, sure, but he hadn’t expected Mary to greet him at the door, and he certainly hadn’t expected that look when she paused to lean on the frame, somewhere between pity and cold fury. He had the distinct impression for a moment she wanted to slap him, but her intent softened, falling with her shoulders.
“Come on. He’s in his room.”
“Went a bit hard on tour?” Crowley stepped in, and felt no better. This place usually felt like sanctuary, light and life and heat—pressure like an embrace, not pressure like a fog.
“They cancelled the tour—where the hell have you been?” The last bit was hissed, hushed like she didn’t want it to carry. “He’s not well; he’s not been well for over a month. I told him to call you but he said you come in your own time, and I said I think that’s a load of—” With a deep breath, Mary reined herself in. “He’s in his room. You know the way.”
Yes. He did. He’d been here the week Freddie bought the place, stumbled down the hall with him, drunk and laughing, celebrating. A new house, new freedom, a new era of music…
This time, he walked slow. Romeo yowled greetings with every step, making every attempt to weave through Crowley’s legs. He was the only one unafraid; that, at least, hadn’t changed. Everything else was off kilter, but the little tabby and white scrapper Freddie had pulled out of a garbage can two years ago still knew enough about real danger to know when he wasn’t near it. Absently, Crowley knelt to pet him before he opened the door, forehead pressed to the doorframe.
Strange things, bodies and time. He shouldn’t have had human instincts, but they probably came somewhere in the DNA, even if the body was only a suit. Whether he should have had them or not, he could feel them, raised hackles and cold palms. A heavy stomach, and something in the back of his mind screaming and screaming—
Crowley stood, and pushed open the door.
The shock of delight in Freddie’s eyes wasn’t a watt diminished, but it was a constant in a sea of change. He was pale, great wide biceps gone visibly thinner as he pushed himself up higher in bed—an effort that left his chest heaving.
“Anthony! I told Mary I knew you’d be passing through—”
“And she said she told you to call me; why the hell didn’t you call me?” He didn’t mean to sound so harsh, he didn’t, but the sharp edges lived inside of him and sometimes, sometimes it was all he could do to keep them from pressing out of his skin.
“To have you come here and see me like this?” Freddie’s best smile was always disarming, radiating charm. The charm was still there, but the cracks could barely hold it. The circles beneath his eyes were purple black, uncovered, his chuckle weak. “Darling, relax; it’s—it’s a touch of pneumonia.”
The coughing that interrupted him didn’t sound like a touch of anything.
Shutting the door behind him with a sharp click, Crowley crossed to the edge of the bed, taking a seat beside him. With his hand between Crowley’s, it was no effort at all to feel the weight of pressure on Freddie’s chest, a significant pain—and something else that moved under it like an oil slick, a wisp of smoke.
Crowley’s heart hammered loud enough that the rhythm beat in his ears.
Reaching up, Crowley laid the back of his hand against Freddie’s forehead. It was human, unnecessary when he need only reach out and sense to feel the fever, but Crowley couldn’t help himself. There was something different about the sensation of it on his own skin, a rising heat that the snake in him craved like anything, and the rest of him wanted only to recoil from.
Too much, too hot, dangerously out of control.
“You’re burning up—” Crowley said, still sharp, harsh with affront. “When was the doctor here? Whatever the fuck antibiotic they’re giving you isn’t working; if you let me talk to them—”
“It’s you and me that need to talk, first,” Freddie said, too gentle for an interruption, too accepting of Crowley’s sharpness to mean anything but disaster. Careful, too careful, he pulled Crowley’s right hand between his. “There’s something I’ve needed to tell you, but I—with you, I didn’t have to, because I knew you were safe, and I’ve enjoyed…not changing. I wouldn’t have risked you for anything, but you said it wasn’t a risk, and I didn’t want anything to change, because you’ve been one of the great constants of my life and if I lose that now—”
Freddie’s eyes were downcast, something wet at the tips of his lashes already, but the waver in that strong voice was the blow that did Crowley in.
“No. No, no, no, would you—stop!”
That last bit, that was directed at time. Like it always did when it was truly important, time listened.
The air went deathly still, and Crowley pulled his hand away so that he could stagger back away from the bed, and collapse without a stich of grace to the carpet in front of the fireplace without being seen. His breath was coming too fast and hard and he hung his head between his knees, hands pressed to his temples.
What was it humans said, for moments like this? Breathe into a goddamn paper bag?
If he had one, he’d be setting it on fire.
Crowley’s hands were trembling, mind flipping back through tabloids so fast it dizzied him.
Freddie Mercury tested for AIDS at Harley Street clinic
I’d shoot my son if he had AIDS says vicar
Freddie Mercury tests negative for HIV
Britain threatened by gay virus plague
Gay “Queen”- does he have the gay cancer?
On one occasion, he’d made a copy of The Sun catch fire in the hands of the reader—not enough to burn the man’s fingers, just enough that he dumped his sandwich to the ground for the ducks and ruined his scarf. That was as seriously as he’d taken it, because they were tabloids. He was a gay man, and they were tabloids, and they were disgustingly sick and couldn’t mind their own blessed business, but there couldn’t be any truth to it. There couldn’t; Freddie was healthy, strong, a fucking force to be reckoned with.
The sound of his own frantic breath was unbearable.
Smoke and flame pressed and pressed on his skin, writhing, until he whirled to the side to fling it out of himself and into the fireplace with a scream loud enough to scrape his throat raw.
The blaze settled there, crackling merrily from nothing but ash.
Crowley felt marginally less likely to shake apart.
Time. There was none of it now; nothing for it. He’d ignored as bigotry and the stress of a life on the road every sign that might have warned him, and now it was far too late to try and turn this mess around. Healing was a heavy miracle, one he shouldn’t have even still been able to perform, technically, but he’d done it. He could do it, when the chips were down and Aziraphale couldn’t and there was nothing else—but everything had a cost, and for this, the cost would be too high. If only Crowley had to pay it, that’d be well and fine. He’d been tortured before; he could be tortured again, but if they came for Freddie because of him—
No, it was unbearable; unthinkable. Only Aziraphale deserved hell less.
Ripping off his glasses, Crowley pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes until the feel of stopped time started to prick at his skin like tacks. Too long, too much; he had to rejoin the world, no matter how desperately he didn’t want it.
Crowley took a deep breath, and pushed himself to his feet. His hands still trembled when he guided his glasses back into place, but with another breath and the last step to the bed, he’d forced them to still. He took his seat on the edge of the mattress, put his right hand back between Freddie’s, and snapped with the left.
Time leapt forward.
Freddie’s hands tightened around his. “Listen, I know you don’t want to hear—”
“I don’t,” His outburst might have gone unseen, but his voice was still raw, and a fire still crackled out of nothing in the grate. “But you had to, and I wasn’t here. So, I have to hear it now; don’t feel sorry for me.”
Freddie’s eyes had already cut to the fire, wide with something far closer to awe than fear. By the time he looked back to Crowley, they’d already faded to something Crowley could hardly stand. Not pity, not quite, but a guilt heavy sorrow that bit at his skin like ice.
“Darling, it’s not worth all that—I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t you dare—” Crowley took a breath, and started again, lower. “Don’t you dare apologize to me, not for this. You haven’t done a fucking thing wrong, do you understand? Not a thing. If I’m angry, I’m angry—and I am angry, but it’s not at you.”
“Just as long as you aren’t angry at yourself. This isn’t your fault, either—not literally, of course, but not—”
“It’s past HIV; you’re sick and it’s not getting better, this is…this is full blown AIDS. The antibiotics are either going to work, or they aren’t. That’s about the shape of things right now, isn’t it?” Right now, and the next time, and the next, until the coin flip failed.
Freddie nodded, and Crowley tugged him forward until he was bearing most of his less substantial weight, Freddie’s face buried in the hollow of Crowley’s throat, Crowley’s hand cradling the back of his head.
“Right,” Crowley said. “Right, so we hope they work, and you do your work getting well, and I get back to Kensington as—as often as I can manage. Nothing changes.”
Freddie echoed it back to him with a kiss pressed against his skin, and Crowley was imminently grateful for the hold he had on him, and all the more so for his glasses.
Nothing changes.
Everything already had, while he wasn’t looking.
*****
Soho, London
1989
*****
Crowley didn’t have to knock. He didn’t have to, but Aziraphale appreciated common courtesy, and it was usually good form—all of that beside the fact that for the first decades after he bought the place, having a welcome where Aziraphale lived had felt such a strange, electric thing. There was something to be said for the firecracker burst of heat behind his ribs for the half second of delight he could catch in Aziraphale’s eyes when he found Crowley at the door. It itself, that was often reason enough to knock.
Fresh from leaving Freddie sleeping with a quilt, two cats, and an unholy fire to stand guard over him, Crowley didn’t knock.
It was 3:15, the streets as dark and empty as they ever got, and the force of Crowley slamming the door behind him had to have echoed across the intersection. The panes rattled, but Crowley was already too busy yelling to take notice of the slight tinge of something like genuine affront in the sound. (It’s arguable whether a store could indeed have feelings about rough treatment from familiar hands—this particular store would argue that it certainly could.)
“Aziraphale!” There was no attempt at moderation, or consideration. Crowley could still feel the fire under his skin, squirming. The manic horror that had pushed his lungs to gasping didn’t feel far behind. “Aziraphale, I know you’re home!”
He did, in fact, absolutely know. He could feel him, every bit as easily as he could feel time. A source of radiation, warm like a rock baked in the sun, hot enough to burn, though his fingers itched to touch it.
“There’s absolutely no need for bellowing—you could have called first, Crowley; I’m right in the middle of—”
“Tell me—” Crowley started. A damned tremor already shook his voice, but at least so far it rang only of rage. It was seeing Aziraphale that did it, layers brutally stripped to expose everything raw. “HIV. The AIDS crisis; tell me it’s not your lot’s doing, or tell me who did it.”
For half a second, Aziraphale stood stock still, far more a ruffled owl in a torch than a deer in headlights.
Any other moment, he’d have been impossibly charming.
“I—well, I must admit I’d assumed your lot—”
“It’s not us.” Crowley spit the words out, staccato deliberation. “It’s not us, and the whole goddamn world is calling it a curse from God, and if she did this, if she sanctioned this…this slaughter, and the rest of you lot are sitting on your hands—”
“Crowley!”
The sharp rebuke felt, instantly, utterly deserved. Crowley’s head turned with it, as perfectly synchronized as if he’d actually been slapped. It felt a near thing.
“You know I’d never go along with such a horrid—if I’d heard anything, I would have come to you.” The sharpness had faded almost immediately into firm calm. From the corner of his eye, he could see Aziraphale coming closer, studying him with a calculating determination that would, undoubtedly, find the truth at any moment.
Crowley couldn’t bear to be looking at him when he did.
Head still turned so far his neck hurt, Crowley shook it once, the barest motion. Don’t, please don’t. Let me be; let it go.
“It’s my understanding the whole matter started decades ago, really, a…a bush hunter in the Congo who took a nasty bite from a chimpanzee. Unplanned, nothing for it, and you know how these things spread.” Aziraphale had come so close he was barely an arm’s length away, his voice dropping softer and softer with every step. “What’s happened?”
Crowley’s jaw jumped, the tension near unbearable. The back of his neck was aching in an entirely too human way, and his rage was fast burning into something far more dangerous.
Rather than surrender to that, Crowley grasped at the rage’s tail.
“So she didn’t do it—I’m not sure it matters. I’m not sure I care—silence can be damning, too, angel, and if it’s true for the poor souls she’s trapped here, she can hold herself to the same bloody high bar! We both know you don’t keep up, but even you have to have heard; they’re blaming this on her, they’re…praising it like some kind of cleansing flood and if someone was putting my name on this lunacy I’d have the spine to speak up!”
“Yes, well—speaking up has never been your problem, has it?” The words stung a bit, like lemon in a cut, but Aziraphale said them so softly, matter of fact. Almost fond. “I forgive you.”
“Do you forgive her?” Crowley rounded on him, unable to help himself. The argument was old, worn smooth. Neither one of them could stop touching it, just as neither of them could ever reach into the unsaid hollows, the bits left to lay on the underside.
What about what she did to me, Aziraphale, do you forgive her for that?
Aziraphale’s swallow was heavy, hands busy. “It’s not…it’s not really my place—” Even with his glasses in place, there was something in looking at him up close and full on that gave Crowley away, something Aziraphale could read that he hadn’t fully reined in. What it was Crowley didn’t have the faintest, but he could see the second Aziraphale put it all together, a burst of shock in his eyes and a sharp intake of breath. “This is about your musician friend.”
“He’s not my friend.” It both was and wasn’t true, ingrained kneejerk vitriol that hid absolutely nothing, not here, not from him.
Aziraphale’s eyes only went softer. “Oh, Crowley—”
“You don’t have to say it, alright? I know, I know, we don’t get attached; it’s stupid, there’s millions of them and they die if you look at them wrong, and I’m not attached, but if I was, then…then the damage is done and there’s no point raking me over the coals for—” He stopped, and swallowed, suddenly silenced by the weight of Aziraphale waiting him out.
The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, and still Crowley found himself looking away again as Aziraphale took the last step into his space. Crowley could feel the press of his concern like a heat lamp against his chest, so blatant a shiver danced up his spine.
“I wasn’t going to say anything of the sort, and you know it.” Even his chiding was soft, damn him. “I was going to say that sometimes we can’t help it, getting attached—after all they were made to be very loveable and we’re surrounded by them. If you…engage with them, sometimes it’s going to happen, and I can imagine…I can’t imagine how this must be for you.”
“Because I’m evil?” He couldn’t resist the needling, not when all his insides felt made of sharpness. Needles and knives, smoke and fire. His throat was so tight he felt dizzy.
“Because you have to pretend it isn’t breaking your heart—and you’re a very good actor, my dear, but no one should have to—” Aziraphale reached for him, an aborted grab that stopped just short of closing over the sleeve of his jacket. “Come on. Why don’t you stay for a few days? There’s the room upstairs if you’d rather be left alone.”
The cruelty of all of it stung Crowley’s eyes so viciously he had to squeeze them shut. A month ago, being invited to stay here would have been an unimaginable prize. Now…
Freddie’s breath as he left had sounded so labored. It played in the back of his mind still, even as a metronome. Aziraphale would be here, next month, next year, the next hundred. The metronome could stop at any moment.
“I can’t.” And Satan did it kill him to say it, like scraping out another layer of his skin. “He’s not well, and I—I don’t know how long—I can’t draw attention to him, but I can’t leave him alone. Not like this.”
“Of course. Of course you can’t.” Aziraphale murmured, as if the understanding would make Crowley flinch less if he could barely hear it. “Just a drink then, before you go? I hate to send you back out like this, and I’ve been saving a bottle of Talisker for you if—well, this certainly seems a bad enough day to warrant it.”
The last of the rage bled out, unable to hold. Crowley rubbed hard at the back of his neck to hide the tremor in his hand, not that it mattered. Surely, surely Aziraphale could feel the ache coming off him, like a poisoned wound.
“Yeah, alright. I’ll stay for a drink.”
In the end, they split the bottle, and he fell asleep on the couch and woke up with his boots and glasses off, a yellow tartan blanket over him, and the first grey-yellow light of dawn starting to creep around the cracks. Aziraphale was gone, but the note next to his glasses was in his flowing script, so him that Crowley could hear an echo of him the minute he touched the thick paper.
When the time comes and you need a place to go, you don’t have to ask. You’re safe here.
In conversation, he’d have protested he didn’t need safety. Unspoken, written…well.
Crowley rubbed his thumb over the letters, then folded the scrap of paper smaller still, and tucked it into the inside of his jacket, held close to his chest.
*****
Kensington, London
1991
*****
From a bench on the edge of Kensington Gardens, Crowley had watched the papers be devoured. He had seen sharks pick a body clean, great mouthfuls of flesh and fat ripped from a corpse with violent abandon. It was the only comparison that felt apt—the way hands grabbed at the papers, pulling them taut and close to their faces. The scandalized whispers and louder than whispers, walkers talking openly to each other, around and around.
He said he was negative, before, do you remember? I never believed it.
It’s no shock to anyone; did you see that latest video?
I can’t believe it; I really can’t.
You know, I had the biggest crush on him—it’s all weird now, isn’t it?
Course, everyone always knew he was bent.
Crowley watched and listened until it was near sunset, until the watching and listening felt too far into masochism for even his strong constitution, until his grip had gone so fierce the wood of the bench had started to crumble under his hand. A walk back might help clear his head, but if he saw the undoubted horde of paparazzi outside Freddie’s familiar green door just then, he’d have been likely to do something regrettable.
He took a shortcut instead, a wave of his hand and flick of his wings out and back in. The park was gone; the muffled hush of Freddie’s room surrounded him. When Crowley had left his mother and sister had been in with him, but now there was only the cats and Mary. It was nothing, the barest use of power to go unseen until she left, waiting in the corner for the moment he could step out of the dark, and cross to the bed.
“You’re back. How’s the world taking it?” Freddie’s eyes were closed, but after so many years it was no small wonder he knew Crowley’s weight on the edge of his bed, the scent and presence of him. Even a human had enough senses for that.
“Quite the bombshell.” Crowley nudged Delilah aside to get a bit closer, irrepressible fondness curling his lip when she swatted at him for his trouble. An adoring little thing, for Freddie, but she’d hated Crowley, always. “I’m sure Peter and Brian will be by to give you a full play by play.”
Freddie hummed, and coughed, and Crowley’s hands went immediately to his chest.
Rather than wave him off as he sometimes did, Freddie caught and held him there, and Crowley could feel a prickle of something against his skin that made him want to rip it off.
“Will you help me sit up?”
Gently, Crowley helped him shift, stacking pillows and scattering cats and pulling the quilt higher around him, until he was resting and Crowley’s hip was pressed against his, leaning over him with a hand on the bed. Crowley kissed his forehead because he was right there, and he could, and for a moment things almost felt normal again.
“I have something to ask you, Anthony—since I left Switzerland, really, but it needed to be the right time—I wanted the announcement out first. If I’d left it for after, someone could have gotten it wrong.”
Gotten it wrong, or covered it up entirely. For all that he’d wanted his privacy, the conflict between shelter and truth had clearly been playing on his mind for a long time—long before Switzerland, when he’d stopped his own medication, and come home to die.
Crowley’s breath went still, held until his body’s lungs burned because he let them.
Slowly, Crowley pulled his sunglasses down, and folded them. He settled them on the end table with care, giving himself time to hesitate that he really didn’t need. He felt naked, vulnerable, but now was the time for it. Now, while time was still something they were experiencing the same stretch of together.
“Crowley,” he murmured. “It’s just Crowley. I made up the Anthony J part to fit in.” Strictly speaking, he’d made up Crowley, too, but that was neither here nor there. It was his name because he’d chosen it, and fond as he’d become of Anthony, too, he wanted to hear Freddie say it properly, just once, before he lost the chance.
Freddie’s laughter had to hurt him, now, but it came, anyway, warm and haggard. “Crowley, then. You could have told me; it’s only more we have in common—though I prefer the one I gave myself, but there you are.” Freddie’s fingers closed around Crowley’s wrist, thumb stroking over faint ridges of vein and bone as he said Crowley’s name again—softer, heavier, an understanding of what he’d actually been asked that made something dark and feral in Crowley want to bolt.
The rest of him wanted to explain, to say it all again—how he preferred the name he’d given himself, too, but it was the first one, the real one, the one Aziraphale had taken to before anyone else, the one that didn’t make him feel like something cursed—
“I’m tired, Crowley.”
Under Freddie’s thumb, Crowley’s pulse jumped.
“Do you want me to stay? I can stay, or I can come back—”
“Crowley.”
“You’re just overusing it now; what’s that thing mums do, that’s my name, don’t wear it out?”
Reaching out, Freddie caught his chin, and tugged. He wasn’t strong anymore, Crowley didn’t have to lift his head—and still, he let himself be pulled, looking up to meet eyes that hadn’t looked anything but hollow for weeks. The shadows under them were atrocious, the sink of his cheeks damn near skeletal. Side by side, the average human bystander likely couldn’t have even named him the same man as the one he’d been in 1986, but Crowley had watched it all happen up close, a gradual slide that burned in his chest like molten shrapnel.
“All these years, the bits and pieces I’ve seen you do, mostly when you got comfortable or thought I wasn’t looking—I know it’s barely scratching the surface. It has to be. I know you could help me, if you want to.”
“I can’t heal you,” Crowley said. The desperation in his own voice barely sounded like himself at all. “I can’t, if I could don’t you think I would have—”
“I don’t doubt it; I never have. Not for a second. Right now, all I need—all that’s going to help me is to get out of here, and I’m ready for that. I’ve said enough goodbyes, and I’ve finished up the Christmas shopping. I’m ready.”
“Yeah? And what if I’m not?” The crack in his voice threatened to shatter him, worse with Freddie staring so unflinching into eyes that should have terrified him, eyes he’d only had opportunity to gaze at unfettered maybe half a dozen times before.
“You have to let me go eventually, darling.” His whisper was so soft, free of reproach. Even if Crowley denied him relief now, he wouldn’t be angry. Somehow, that knowledge felt worse. “Why not now? On my terms?”
Crowley tugged his chin away, head bowing. If he was utterly honest, wholly, he’d been expecting something like this since Freddie came home. The end had seemed so close, like a taste on the back of his tongue he couldn’t shake, so lingering he’d kept himself close, too, popping in and out as Freddie bought Christmas presents and looked over his house and watched old concert footage Crowley largely looked away from. He’d visited with his family, finished his will. He’d been winding down ever since Switzerland, purposeful and determined, and Crowley could only blind himself so much to obvious truth.
It would be easy enough to manage. Freddie was sick, teetering. Any power Crowley used that fell under the technical limb of destruction wasn’t even likely to be questioned, much less reviewed.
If anything, he’d get a goddamn commendation.
Reflexive, Crowley pulled his hand away, fingers pressing for a moment to the place in his jacket where he could feel the square of Aziraphale’s note press blunt against his chest, like staunching a wound.
He could do this, for Freddie. He could do it, and disappear into the bookshop until he could face the world again without wanting to cast half the people in it into flames. If he didn’t disappear, the first hack journalist to call this nightmare deserved or just would end up taking the brunt of fury they strictly speaking wouldn’t deserve, and Crowley was sick to his teeth of death and destruction. Burning an idiot wouldn’t make him feel better, not really, not for more than five minutes.
Given that so much of his life had been spent on a baby planet in a baby galaxy, he wasn’t sure he had ever felt so fucking old.
Crowley scrubbed a hand over his face, and resisted the urge to put the glasses back on.
“I know it’s a lot to ask—”
“But you know I can take it, and I can.” Crowley cleared his throat. “I can. Course I can; you never ask me for anything, and you could have done. Most people—” He couldn’t help but look at him again, while he could. The minute he did, he could feel the pain and softness there blunting his own edges. The unbearable tension hadn’t left his skin, but it felt easier when he slipped closer, enough for Freddie to lean forward, and press their foreheads together. Enough to breathe with him. “You knew enough to know you could have asked more of me, and you never did.”
“I didn’t need to. You always came back; that was more than enough.”
For ages Freddie had been far too sick for a kiss long enough to take his breath. It was a damn shame, but as Crowley leaned forward and pressed kisses along the line of his jaw, over cracked lips and to the edge of his smile, he had the somewhat settling certainty that it was, also, more than enough.
“I know you won’t tell me what you are—and if I’m honest, I’ve always liked the mystery, so I’m not sure I want to know. But, tell me this—will I see you again?”
Crowley’s hand settled on the nape of Freddie’s neck, gentle pressure to keep him close as he breathed, and formed his answer first in his chest, over and over until it was strong, until he could lie and sound as if he meant it.
“Might do, yeah. Someday, if you want.”
“You know I would. You’re welcome wherever I am; how could you not be? I’ve loved you half my life.”
Crowley’s hand squeezed over his spine, right on the edge of painfully hard. He couldn’t say it, and Freddie couldn’t feel it—not in the inhuman way, but with Crowley’s mouth pressed to his temple as he breathed hard and shaky against his skin, he had to believe Freddie knew it was there all the same. He had to.
Freddie’s fingers curled into the lapels of his jacket, clinging so hard with his own insubstantial strength that his knuckles trembled, bumping against Crowley’s chest. The moment stretched, and passed.
It was enough—or Crowley believed it had been. Sometimes belief was the best certainty anyone could have, even someone like him.
“Here,” Crowley murmured, gravelly and worn, and not half as tired as he felt. “Sit up a little more, let me—”
Rather than finish, he shifted them both, climbing into bed properly with him to cradle Freddie’s body with his own, slotted between his legs and held tight against his chest. He buried his face in Freddie’s neck, and breathed in sweat and sickness. It was all off, all wrong, and still there was a touch of him under it all, a faint thread of comfort. Crowley pressed one hand flat to his chest, over his lungs.
“Do you remember the first night I took you out in the Bentley? You said you hadn’t seen the stars like they were in India in years, and we drove out of the city. It wasn’t quite the same, but Brian was still jealous.”
Freddie’s huff turned to coughing, a shake that rattled his frame no matter how tightly Crowley held him.
“He was insulted. I told him it was better than his telescopes.”
“Quite right. I always say stars look better without a lens.” Crowley kissed the top of his head, the soft skin just behind the shell of his ear. “Close your eyes. You’ll see them.”
It only took the barest brush of power to nudge him into sleep. In the near silence after, there was a lull where Crowley held him, and could have reconsidered. It would have been easier, reconsidering—he could have come up with a reason why he couldn’t, something mystical that might sound real—but at the end of the day he’d know his own lie, and the rasp of Freddie’s breathing was harsh in the silence. His arms bruised purple, his body emaciated, most of his right foot lost to infection—
No. He could only go along with selfishness so far.
Freddie's lungs, too, were already so deeply ravaged. When Crowley called on power he rarely used, it was nothing at all to push, and spread the pressure deeper into them like a creeping rot. Within moments, he could feel his breath begin to grow shallower and shallower, compressed by fluid, buried under weight and weakness and dreams.
Painfully easy, and so impossibly difficult Crowley’s ears were ringing. The tightness in his skin was so severe everything that touched him that wasn’t the weight of Freddie’s body felt too much, too cold, too sharp.
When he could bear it, he gentle extracted himself, laying Freddie out against his pillows with a kiss to his forehead that lingered. His breath had gone pitifully shallow, barely visible at all. By the morning, he’d be gone, but he wouldn’t wake again before then. Crowley had made sure.
On the way out, he stopped only to catch Mary in the kitchen, his hand firm on her shoulder to keep her from looking back at him as he murmured under his breath.
“You should all go sit with him. It won’t be long, now.”
He no longer had it in him to care what she knew, and what she didn’t. He was burning down to his bones, and if he didn’t get out, he was going to scream.
Crowley was gone before she could turn around.
*****
The snake frequently seen in the window above A. Z. Fell’s bookshop through the early summer of 1992 was widely suspected to be a strange marketing ploy, or an early and perhaps broken animatronic. These theories were helped along by the vibrant tree the snake was typically coiled around, and which sported cheery lights at Christmas.
To any customer who asked about the snake, Aziraphale would remark only that he enjoyed the sunlight. From November of 1991 to June of 1992, the bookshop did, indeed, receive more hours of direct sunlight than at any point in its long history.
Strictly speaking, Crowley was not aware of this—he wasn’t really aware of much, save the periodic press of Aziraphale’s warm, dry hands on his scales as he came in now and then on the pretext of tidying the room as he checked on Crowley, and misted both him and the plants with spring water.
He slept, and existed, and when he finally felt the urge to have proper thoughts again, he changed his form in the middle of a warm afternoon, gathered the clothes Aziraphale had left folded for him at the end of the bed, and left a note in their place.
He arrived home to healthy plants, and a large stack of mail. It was his assumption that Aziraphale had been stopping by to show his plants maddening kindness, and that assumption was wholly correct. What he did not know, and never would, was that his mail was not, in fact, complete.
With painstaking care, Aziraphale had sorted through it, and removed a letter of commendation from Lord Beelzebub. With far less care, he burned it in a nearby alley.
*****
Seven Sisters Cliffs, East Sussex
2022
*****
Arguably, the view from the Seven Sisters cliffs was better than the ever famous White Cliffs of Dover. This argument, of course, depended on many things—preference, time of year, nostalgia, weather. There were endless layers of nuance, but to Crowley the important facts were these—the drive from London wasn’t bad, the stars were bright, and it was a place he’d been once with Aziraphale in 1239, and again with Freddie in 1973.
Coming back alone didn’t really have the same flavor, but nothing did. London stuck to his skin like napalm, so where was he to go? Living out of his car was one thing, but it had been so long since he was truly homeless; he had forgotten the loneliness.
As bad as it surely had been before, the after was undoubtedly far worse.
From his seat on the hood of the Bentley the stereo was out of reach, not that his choices had had any affect for days. After he’d turned off A Nightengale Sang In Berkeley Square, there’d been nothing but Love of my Life, nothing he could do to stop it. The Bentley was as out of control as his own rabid mind, and he couldn’t really blame the poor thing. Aziraphale was gone. Aziraphale had left.
What was there, after that?
He’d thought picking up a pack of cigarettes might give him half a second of comfort—he’d been surrounded by Freddie’s voice for days, and Freddie had so often smelled so strongly of them, but it was never a vice Crowley had cared to cultivate. He had enough smoke in his life, and Aziraphale hated the smell.
When that became all he could think of before he’d even lit the first one, he chucked them toward the sea, then miracled them into the trunk when all he could imagine was the face Aziraphale would have made to see him so purposefully littering.
An impossible task, not thinking of his face.
Behind him, Love of my Life restarted, and Crowley let his head hang to rest against his forearm, propped up on the lanky jut of his knee. The pinpricks of the stars had started to blur, and vise tight squeeze of his ribs seemed to still be winding. In October of 1991, smack in the midst of the interminable wait of Freddie’s last weeks, they’d listened to A Night at the Opera together beginning to end in a way they hadn’t done in years, and Freddie had tilted his head back against Crowley’s thigh, reached up to touch his cheek until he was sure Crowley was paying attention.
I wrote you a perfectly good song, Anthony. I want you to promise me one day you’ll use it.
Use it how, exactly? It wasn’t as if he could play it enough times and summon Aziraphale from the damned heavens, though the car certainly seemed to think so—it wasn’t as if it would matter to Aziraphale at all, not when his words hadn’t, not when pleading hadn’t.
Nothing had reached him; not even a kiss. In stories and songs, kisses always worked. (They didn’t, of course they didn’t, but in all the ones Crowley cared about, they always had. This would only be shocking for anyone who had not already realized Crowley was a romantic—namely, Crowley himself.)
Losing Freddie had taken a piece of him, a wound that pressed beneath his skin as surely as the scars on his back, but it was a wound. Wounds healed; even scar tissue became a bearable part of the body. Losing Aziraphale would be vivisection, evisceration. He had laid claim to too many pieces, to all of them. There was no possible extrication, and the prospect of even needing to consider it was already ripping him apart.
He was so far down the spiral of self pity and agonizing heartbreak that the fading of his acquired soundtrack lower and lower until he could hear only the ocean fell below his notice. With a little more notice, he might have had a bit of warning that something was about to change—story of his life, that.
A little more notice, a little more time.
It was time, perhaps, that breathed against the back of his neck at just the moment for him to raise his head. The sky was clear, the water dark and stretching out forever to meet it, the space between his wheels and the edge of the cliff so short the distance could have been cleared in a step. The vast emptiness overwhelmed him, and he was on the edge of concluding he’d sensed nothing at all when the silence broke.
“I—” Aziraphale’s voice came from behind him, clarion clear, so sudden Crowley would have been certain he’d imagined it if not for the visceral reaction from his body, like a puppet jerked on its strings.
“—I think I owe you a dance.”