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To be fallen is to know pain.
Not that there's anything terribly unique to knowing pain, Crowley must admit. To be a living thing more complex than pond scum means pain of some sort, and if one's the sort of life that bumbles about the planet, pain's all but guaranteed. How else is one to know to back off when one encounters fire or sharp things. Alongside the gift of pain (for those creatures burdened with more than the most cursory environmental awareness) is, of course, the gift of fear.
Fear is, at its root, the knowledge of pain, the memory of it combined with its anticipation. Fear is a sense of powerlessness in the face of pain. Sometimes, fear is a response to the unknown, but really that's about pain too, isn't it? Because the question, invariably, is whether that unknown might hold pain. No one fears sticking their hand into a bag of candy and facing the unknown of 'will it be cherry or pineapple that I pull out'.
Of course, angels don't know that sort of pain, or any sort of pain, at least they didn't back when Crowley was counted among their number. God didn't really go in for that sort of thing back then. Took creating Earth and, more specifically, all the creeping, growing, shitting, fucking, dying things that drag themselves about it to really make that sort of pain a thing.
The dry run, though, She visited upon the fallen.
The uprising itself hadn't been painful, far as he could remember. The War, the celestial violence both sides had visited upon each other, it'd been amongst beings of energy and spirit, no bodies involved, at least not bodies as humans would understand them, and no pain as they understood it either. No, wasn't until God made earth and creatures and those pesky humans in Her image that She got around to dabbling with the life sort of pain.
But rewinding to before the cosmos, etc, there was the War and the being on the losing side and then, as it were, the Fall. Until the Fall, Crowley didn't know pain. None of them knew any sort of pain.
Until they did.
This pain was, of course, only existential. (Only. Hah.) Turns out the loss of God's love starts off as a sort of itch that quickly blooms into a hollow, screaming ache. A yawning, gaping chunk torn from the very core of one's being that never ever goes away. It festers, naturally, and never really stops itching like the dickens. A bit shit, that.
Worse, it wasn't like there was even an end to it. Going mad wasn't in the cards back then, for him at least, not the way his maker had wired him it turned out. And since he'd just sort of stumbled into the whole shitshow at the eleventh hour, more out of curiosity than any particular zeal for the cause, he didn't have said cause to cling to for distraction.
He'd never admit it to anyone, but he'd had a bit of hope there for a while, thinking perhaps God would realize it was a big misunderstanding, take him back, show some of that famous mercy. But as it turned out, all hope really was was kindling for despair, and all despair really was was a slick slope into the gullet of depression. Of course, curling up in the belly of that proverbial black dog (as dogs, black or otherwise, did not yet exist) and whispering prayers for oblivion just ricocheted off deaf ears and sadly, oblivion wasn't one of the perks that came with being an angel, fallen or otherwise.
Turned out, all curling up got you (when you swum in an ocean of other assholes in similar pain) was torture and bullying and even worse, irritation. Everyone dealt with their yawning pain hole in different ways. It was occasionally terrifying but mostly exhausting. Exhausting and increasingly boring. Terrifyingly, heart-(as much as he could be said to have a heart)-poundingly boring.
And so it was that Crowley got up and dusted himself off (as much as a non-corporeal entity could be said to do so) and got on with the business of existing post-expulsion from heaven. Did his level best to get on with the raging and scheming as well as any of them, though that too got boring quickly, so he mostly learned how to pipe up just often and aggressively enough to be left alone to sulk most of the day (as much as an interval of existence could be called a day before God had really nailed down the concepts of time and light and things like the sun or the universe.)
In any event, things had gone on like this long enough, steeping him in boredom, until he felt the approach of something that might be madness. Now *that* prospect, he welcomed, yearning for a change of pace nearly as badly as he still yearned (without his consent, thank you very much) for God's love. To be fair, he'd done well enough for a while there distracting himself with regret. Worked himself up a nice, juicy fat knot of self-loathing. It bulged in the spot that used to cradle his serenity and for a bit that did alright filling the hole where God's light once was. But even the self-loathing got old, washed away by the never ending waves of boredom that dragged across his existence.
So, yes, the approach of madness. That was the most exciting thing he'd experienced since before the Fall. A tantalizing electricity that he could taste (as much as one without a body could be said to taste) but never quite reach. He'd been mucking about chasing it for a while, and was close enough to giving up and sliding right back into a bully-baiting sack of depression for the fourth or fifth time (bit of a cycle he'd gotten himself into there) when, for lack of a better term, shit went down.
Shit, in this case, being the creation of day and night and nebulae and life and all that. And as previously discussed, with life came pain of the corporeal sort. Physical pain involving nerves and parts of the brain with fancy Latin names. Not that angels or demons had brains as such, but with the creation of, well, everything, came something of a software update, for the demons at least. Couldn't say about his ex-compadres upstairs.
That got the inmates stirred up, and things got exciting for a stretch there as everyone worked terribly hard on gussying up all the spiritual torture with this brand new spice. This gift from God. Hell, he'd been as grateful as anyone for the relief from the monotony. But it wasn't long (in eternal terms) before God got around to the people part, then things started moving rather quickly.
At first, most of his fellow fallen were too preoccupied with all the score settling and exciting new ways to mutually torture to pay all the earthly bits much mind. Wasn't like God immediately sent them all a cheat sheet of which were the important parts, was it. There were stars and black holes and gravity and electrons galore slamming about up there. There were worms and trees and subterranean fungal networks. And a couple of mostly hairless apes. She didn't start off by putting a sign on them saying 'Oy, these ones, my image, souls and such, terribly important, pay attention'.
At first, how were they (they being the demons) to know those two were the bit God gave a particular shit about. Clearly they weren't nothing, weren't *entirely* like the rest of the beasts. But the shitting, bleating, breathing, meat sacks weren't entirely *unlike* the rest of the beasts either, as far as any of the fallen knew during those chaotic early days (which were actual days now, since days had finally been created).
In any event, back during one of Crowley's cycles of attempting to irritate himself out of the belly of the proverbial black dog, back even before the universe *or* dogs, he'd more or less signed up to be on a sub-committee of a sub-committee that concerned itself with surveillance. One of his less idiotic, more powerful fellow fallen had clocked his observational tendencies and offered him the choice between joining and, well, it would be better not to think about option B and it would feel better for Crowley to tell himself there was a choice, but in the end what mattered was that when the question of checking in on the babbling apes came up, Crowley was in a position to raise his hand and say, "Yeah, I guess I'll take that one."
*
Slithering about the grass was quite nice, it turned out, as was basking in the sun on a rock, tasting the air as he watched the apes splash about in the crystalline pools or go on naming sprees or do something called "mating" which seemed like an awful lot of work, but must hold some appeal considering how often they engaged in it.
Watching all of it, particularly the "mating" grew tedious quickly, though, and after the first few reports back to HQ, he spent most of his time enjoying the feel of the sun on his scales. Boredom wasn't entirely absent, but at least he wasn't surrounded by assholes, so as far as he was concerned, he'd be happy to stay on this detail as long as he was able.
But, of course, inevitably, curiosity got the better of Crowley. It was what fucked him into falling and, as it turned out, it fucked him into stupidly falling in love with a stupid fucking angel.
*
It was a Tuesday when Crowley noticed it. He was fairly sure it hadn't been there before that Tuesday, but the truth was most days his attention was more or less occupied by watching the apes and finding the warmest, most sun-drenched rocks from which to watch said apes. But, bored, curious, etc. So, on that particular Tuesday he found himself slithering once more along the inner perimeter of the great, stone wall which encircled the garden. He came upon that narrow crack in the wall, near one of the waterfalls, and after a moment's consideration wriggled his way in.
A minute or so of slithering later, he emerged to find an endless expanse of sunlit sand. The patch he found himself on fell in the shadow of the wall, and he found himself further curious as to whether sun-warmed sand was as delightful as sun-warmed rocks. He slithered along the outer perimeter of the wall until he emerged from the shadow and discovered that sun-warmed sand, at least there and then, was positively scorching.
He slithered back in the direction he came, but out here, the winds relentlessly swirled the sand which must've covered the hole he snuck out of. Or perhaps God was being an asshole, because as the sun rose and the shadow shrank, he could not find his way back into the garden. Before long, the sun was directly over head, and he slithered helplessly along the stone barrier, searching desperately for any small crack that might offer a return.
Mixed in with the searing pain of his scorched belly was, for some odd reason, a memory of the yearning he once had to return to God's love, which didn't exactly make things better. Briefly, he wondered if he could actually die while in this form, but somehow he knew he wouldn't, or perhaps he feared he wouldn't, but whatever the case he was in pain and afraid and nearly frantic, close to tears, or he would have been if snakes had tears, when he heard a soft, musical voice.
"Oh, hello there. Aren't *you* a handsome fellow? How did you get out here?"
Crowley lifted his snakey head and, dizzy from the heat and pain, was only able to make out a vaguely ape-shaped figure against the too-bright blue of the sky. Then, he passed out.
When he came to, he found he was on a cool patch of rock, with something soft and warm cushioning his head. The air tasted of the waterfall in the northeast corner of the garden, and from somewhere nearby, he could hear the mating grunts and hoots of the apes.
All over, he felt comfortable and safe and (though he didn't identify it as such at the time) loved. All over, except for the place where his head rested on the warm thing, which stung in the most peculiar, familiar, unsettling, indescribable way. But he wasn't quite coherent enough at that point to process it or identify what it reminded him of.
When the voice made its return, with a soft, friendly, "Hello again. Gave me a bit of a scare. You feeling all right now, little guy?" he didn't recognize it any more than he had right before passing out, but it still held a ring of familiarity. Crowley backed up a few slithers and lifted his head, taking in the creature in front of him and realizing, belatedly that it was no creature.
Although it was more or less in the same shape as the apes, it wasn't in fact an ape any more than Crowley was in fact a serpent. It was an angel. He was an angel (as much as any angel could be called a he.)
Though, Crowley realized, the ape shape the angel was in was decidedly more like the one designated 'him'. Had the dangly bits that came with many of the male mammals and everything. But he wasn't an ape. Crowley could feel it. He could feel the divinity radiating off the angel, the reflection of God's light that could only come from one who was still in Her grace.
The angel smiled at him and tilted his head. "That's better. Look at you, slithering about, right as rain. You really shouldn't go out there, you know. I don't think it's against the rules, I'm only meant to keep the humans in as far as I know, but it's much nicer in here, don't you think?"
The angel reached out a tentative finger and gently stroked Crowley's scaly head. "Aren't you lovely," he murmured.
Along with the touch came the return of that strange, familiar pain. Crowley flinched back, hissing instinctively.
"Sorry, sorry. Don't like to be touched. Noted." The angel reclined on the shady rock, propped up on his elbows, one knee bent, and sighed. "I suppose you'll slither off now, as is your nature."
One of the apes, no, 'humans' made a particularly loud mating whoop and the angel turned his head for a moment to watch them before turning back to gaze at Crowley. "And I suppose they'll keep doing whatever that is, as is apparently their nature. Just as well. I'm meant to guard the gate, but can I tell you a secret?"
Crowley slithered ever so slightly forward.
"It's ever so boring." Then a moment later, much more quietly, he added, "And lonely. Terribly lonely." Then he cleared his throat and sat up straight. "But an honor. A privilege even. Given to me by God Herself." He tried for a smile, but it wavered, then he deflated and stared dejectedly at his hands.
The whole time the angel spoke, Crowley was wracking his brain for what the strange pain reminded him of. Then, the words 'God Herself' tumbled out of his pretty little mouth and Crowley realized what it might be. Couldn't be sure, though. Not until he tasted the pain one more time.
Carefully, he slithered back over to the angel and after a fortifying breath, crawled up onto his ankle. The angel startled, then went quite still. With that scale to skin contact, Crowley confirmed it.
When he touched the angel, when his corporeal form contacted the angel's, the pain returned. It wasn't searing like the sand, or dull like the hunger that grew in his little snakey belly in between when he could be bothered with eating mice. It wasn't quite like any pain he'd experienced in this body, or the pain they'd all got with the creation software update. It wasn't quite like anything so much as it was like a peculiar mix of the aching hole where God's love used to be, and the regret that tugged at him when he recalled that love, and (he would later realize once he'd had arms and legs a time or two) the feeling of pins and needles one gets when one's leg has fallen asleep and one tries to move it. And other things too. Other delicate flavors he'd come to understand belong only to this angel who he would come to know as Aziraphale.
Ever so gently, the angel he would come to know as Aziraphale leaned forward and slipped his soft hands beneath Crowley's belly, lifting him into the air. The angel's palms gave a slightly sharper sort of pain, still tolerable, it was all perfectly tolerable especially with all the torture nonsense Crowley'd dabbled in and been dabbled with since the update.
Curious about whether other parts of the angel hurt in different ways, he carefully slithered his way up the angel's arm, over his shoulder, then around the back of his neck. At first, the angel kept very still, then he eased backward until he was lying on the rock. Crowley continued his meandering journey over the angel's skin, discovering that the more of him that touched the angel, the more diffuse the 'pain'.
By the time he curled into a loose spiral atop the angel's chest, it was hardly pain at all, more like a bracing tingle mixed with a quarter of an ice cream headache. The angel sighed beneath him and brought up a hand to trace idly along the swirl of Crowley's body. Crowley felt ever so melty when he did that, and he found himself wondering whether even more contact with the angel might feel even lovelier.
He was rather new at this whole having a body thing, though, only ever having been a snake at this point, you see. And so although he had some vague notion that it might be nice if he grew into an even larger snake and came into contact with more of the angel's body, it wasn't the form of an even larger snake that he turned into.
It was, in fact, the form of a slightly lankier, equally male, equally naked, mostly hairless ape. All the limbs were a bit discombobulating for the first few moments, as was the sharp little gasp given by the angel. As was the fact that he'd been right about more contact. With all the skin he now had up against the angel, the feeling couldn't really be called pain at all. More like the warmth of the loveliest, softest rock in the whole garden combined with scratching an itch just a little too hard.
Out of habit, his tongue darted out to taste the air, only since his face was pressed up against the angel's throat, he tasted salt and skin with the faintest aftertaste of divinity. It was ambrosial. He indulged again. Then again at the hollow of the angel's throat, feeling the vibrations on his tongue as the angel said in a trembling voice, "Oh. Oh my. You're not a snake at all, are you?"
Crowley lifted his head and looked down into the angel's face, taking in the different wavelengths available to his somewhat more human but still rather snakey eyes. The angel squirmed beneath him, shifting until one of his lower limbs slid between Crowley's lower limbs, rubbing against the other, shorter lower limb (no, he supposed that must be one of the dangly mammal bits he'd seen flopping about on various mammalian garden creatures.)
Crowley blinked slowly at him, then felt a smile spread across his newly mobile face. Across the angel's cheeks spread the loveliest blush in a hue Crowley'd never been able to perceive in his serpent form. Something between them twitched, and Crowley thought perhaps it was another serpent. He felt a primal flood of possessiveness. This was *his* angel, and the thought of another serpent, another demon, another *anything*, even God Herself coming between them swelled him with rage.
Of course, it was in the next second that he realized the twitch must be the angel's dangly bits growing stiff between them, especially when his own bits quickly followed suit. He bent his head for another taste of the angel's throat, coaxing out of him a soft, high-pitched moan. Crowley shifted again, instinctively (though a little awkwardly, since this whole limb business was a lot to coordinate) and felt a low moan of his own spill out from between his lips.
He rocked against the angel again, guessing that if the humans liked doing this sort of thing with each other's bodies so much, the facsimiles that he and the angel wore might enjoy it as well. This was an exceedingly correct guess, and so Crowley did it again, then again, instinctively chasing the tightening ache between his lower limbs the same way he instinctively sought sunny rocks while in his snakey form.
"Oh that, that's quite, that's oh," babbled the angel, jerking up against him arrhythmically, and scrambling at Crowley's shoulders as though trying to tug him closer. Terribly good idea, thought Crowley, only with these awkward, meaty, corporeal forms it wasn't as if they could really *get* closer. Couldn't exactly merge essences recreationally as one did now and then back when one was an angel.
Then, in a flash of inspiration, Crowley recalled one of the things the humans did when they were doing all the "mating". It'd always looked terribly ridiculous and uncomfortable to Crowley, but he'd been a serpent at the time. Now, wearing a human body, the idea struck him as no less ridiculous, but somehow, at the same time, terribly enticing.
With one of his upper limbs, specifically the 'fingers' part, he felt around between them for an opening, a crack in the wall of skin that kept them apart. He found it a little past the angel's not-so-dangly-more-pokey-now bits, in the sweat-slicked valley between his plump buttocks and was gifted with an arching of the angel's body and more lovely noise. Not quite singing, but something akin to the choruses of praise he used to join in before the Fall. Only this joyful noise was not for God's glory, it was for *him*.
Impatiently, he pressed his stiffened bits against the opening and was rewarded with a full-throated shout as the clenched knot of flesh yielded to him, clutched at him, welcomed him deep into exquisitely smooth heat. All at once he understood *why* the humans spent so much time slapping their flesh together like this. Once he buried that part of himself as deep as he could inside the angel, *his* angel, he had no desire to withdraw even a micron, but his angel was squirming and rocking beneath him, hands scrambling at Crowley's back and buttocks, as though he wanted Crowley deeper still as well.
Experimentally, Crowley withdrew just enough to permit himself the pleasure of return, a movement the angel seemed to approve of, so he did it again, lengthening his strokes each time until he found what seemed to be the perfect distance. Over and over he drove himself into his angel, utterly ignoring the blooming pain in his knees as they scraped against the rock. It hardly registered beneath the onslaught of utter carnal pleasure mixed with exquisite, prickling ache of being so close to divinity.
As he grew more used to operating all these limbs, he found himself adding a little more flair to his thrusts, a swivel here, a swerve there, and on one such copulatory tangent the angel cried out quite loudly, went rigid and shaking beneath him, then his bits pulsed wetly between their stomachs while the tight heat around Crowley grew flutteringly tighter still and then Crowley was the one pulsing wetly, as deep as he could go, inside his lovely angel.
It wasn't exactly the warmth of God's love that passed over Crowley in that moment, but it wasn't entirely unlike that either. He continued to rock, despite the sensitivity of his bits edging closer to pain than the pleasure they'd just given him. A thought occurred to him, a perverse desire to get closer still to the angel, the idea of turning back into a serpent and somehow slithering up into that lovely warm hole, curling up in the angel's belly and hiding there forever, and that thought made him shiver.
But he didn't do that, mostly because he was so loosey-goosey from what he would later discover was called an 'orgasm' and also because he wasn't entirely in control of his powers of transformation back then, being so new to the whole 'body' thing and all.
Beneath him, the angel was still shuddering now and again, utterly loose-limbed and lazily skimming his fingertips up and down Crowley's spine. Crowley's rocking slowed, then stopped as his bits softened inside the angel. He stayed there until he slipped out, and when he felt some of the wetness he'd left in there slip out as well, a sharp, dangerously bright slice of possessiveness cut clean through him. It left marks on the part of him that was rather like a heart, even though it wasn't really a heart at all.
In any event, he slid off of the angel and rolled to lie on his back beside him. For a time, the two watched fluffy clouds drift by until finally, the angel said, "Well. That was."
"It was indeed," Crowley agreed.
"Goodness."
"Mm-hmm." Crowley rolled his head to the side enough to gaze at the angel's face, enjoying the flush that now dominated it as well as his neck and the top of his chest.
"Is that, that is," the angel started. "That is, I wasn't told that we…is this some sort of…what *was* that?"
"Not entirely sure," Crowley said. He propped himself up on his elbow to get a better look at the length of the angel.
Beneath his gaze, the angel squirmed, then wrinkled his nose and dabbed tentatively at the slick patch on his belly. With innocent curiosity, he brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them, pondering for a moment then pronouncing a non-committal, "Hmm."
The tightness in Crowley's belly returned, along with the sharp bright sting in chest that could best be described as "MINE" and he brought his own mouth down to where the angel was giving his fingers kittenish licks. Crowley licked the angel's fingers as well, chasing the taste, then the angel's fingers were gone and they were licking each other's mouths, which was far wetter and more pleasant than Crowley might have guessed if you'd asked him to only an hour before.
Human-ish as they were, they didn't really have to breathe, and so they were able to continue with the thing that would go on to be called 'kissing' for a shamelessly languorous amount of time.
"Are you," the angel asked when Crowley's mouth drifted to his neck, "Are you new here too?"
"Hmm?"
"It's just, I, oh that's lovely, I've only just got here. She said I'm to guard the gate, keep them, oh!"
"Keep them what?"
"I'm to guard the gate and keep them inside the garden."
"That all?" Crowley asked, mouthing his way down to one of the angel's delightfully pink little nipples.
"Hmm?"
"That all She ask you to do?"
"And deliver a, a—" he sighed, "a message to the humans."
"Is that right?"
"But mostly the gate."
"Gate wasn't there yesterday, I'm almost certain of it."
"Brand new," the angel sighed.
"Seems," Crowley said, "If She doesn't want them leaving the garden, might be wise not to build a gate in the first place."
"Well, I mean. You know how She is."
"I certainly do," Crowley grumbled. "But what's this message?"
"Oh. Yes. The tree."
"The tree."
"Apple tree. And how they, hmmm, yes, right there, that's exquisite, how they mustn't eat the apples."
Crowley lavished more attention right there, and murmured, "Why ever not?"
"You know. Good and evil."
"I do know good," he said, feeling his voice go oddly rumbly. He gave the angel a kiss, then nipped at his lower lip, "and evil."
"Yes, well *we're* supposed to. But they aren't."
"Aren't supposed to know?"
"I believe so, but the important thing is no apple eating."
Crowley gave an annoyed groan. "Because She says so, hmm? Of course," he said bitterly.
Gently, the angel planted a hand on Crowley's shoulder and pushed him back enough to look him in the eye. With innocent confusion, he said, "Of course because She said so."
Crowley sat back and wiped his mouth, suddenly overwhelmed with bitterness. Even though he should have known it all along, it was only hitting him in that moment that the angel must think he was another angel. And that inevitably he would realize that Crowley wasn't. Not exactly. Not anymore.
All over again, he felt as though he were falling. Any second, he'd be swallowed up in a pit of the angel's disgust. The first time he fell, he had been reeling from the pain of the loss of God's love, his very first pain, followed ever so quickly by the fear of the unknown. Fear that he might fall forever, or that whatever was at the bottom was worse than that.
Which in a way it was. But in a way it wasn't. At least the bottom wasn't the unknown. At least it was *something*. Crowley could at least form an opinion about something, attack or retreat or go numb to it. *Something* was something he could deal with.
Anything, anything at all other than that horrifyingly endless falling.
Even though they were heavy-lidded with pleasure, the angel's eyes shone with pure curiosity and concern. "Why?" he asked. "What did She tell you about the apples?"
"She hasn't told me anything about the apples," Crowley said evenly, stalling despite himself. It was coming. It was rising up to meet him, just like the pit.
"Didn't tell you about the gate either, hmm? Oh well, mysterious ways and all."
"Yes," Crowley said. At this point, Crowley'd never been strangled about the corporeal neck. Never felt a hangman's noose tugged so tight he couldn't swallow. One day he will, his curiosity being what it is, and his throat will feel ever so much like it did in that moment. But that wasn't on his mind in that moment, of course, because it hadn't happened yet.
Instead, what was on Crowley's mind was the fact that he rather liked that mouth licking thing and once the angel knew what he was he'd certainly decline to do more of it. And, well, Crowley could be impulsive and greedy and self-destructive and self-indulgent and, quite often, full of regret.
He would regret missing the opportunity for one last crack at the whole mouth licking thing, he knew that in his newly acquired bones, so he cupped the angel's soft cheek (so as to steady their kiss) (and to feel the sweet sting of contact at a single point) and leaned close enough to feel the angel's breath. A crackling, electric sparkle arced between them, bit like static electricity but more celestial and that too was a bit like falling.
He wasn't the one who made that final half-inch leap, though. It was his angel, clutching the back of his head, gripping his hair (which was a bit shaggy and long in this first stab at a human form, orange too, though he didn't know that yet. Didn't know his own face. Knew his angel's though.) It was his angel who pressed their lips together, fervently, messily, hungrily.
"Oh that," the angel panted against his neck, "that's brilliant. With the," he sucked, then licked again at the hollow of Crowley's throat and the knot there just melted. Burned down through his aching chest and settled, smoldering deep in his belly.
The angel continued excitedly, "With the mouths, and here. It's just, I don't know what else to call it. It's brilliant." He lifted his head and positively beamed up at Crowley. "Just brilliant."
Crowley lowered his chin to his chest and blew out a long breath.
"What is it?"
No more falling. "The apples."
"Mm-hmm?"
"I'm not," Crowley started, but then his stupid tongue, which had been perfectly adept with the whole kissing nonsense, chose to fail him. "You see the thing is," he tried again.
Then the damn angel gently cupped *Crowley's* cheek and said with infinite tenderness, "It's okay."
That traitorous bitch hope reared her fucking head inside him and he heard himself whisper, "It is?"
"Of course." The angel smiled at him. "You know how Her instructions can be. Sometimes I'm not sure I'm doing it quite right either. But as long as you do as She says and try your best, it'll all turn out okay."
Crowley pulled away from the angel's touch, covered his face with his hands and groaned, quite loudly. Then, under his breath, a quiet "Fuck." Then a deep inhale which turned out to be a mistake because his hands smelled, quite strongly, of the angel's body. "Okay," he said to himself. "Right. So, the thing is," he looked up and met the angel's concerned gaze.
Before he could say anything else, the angel put a hand on his arm and said, "It's going to be okay."
He swatted the angel's hand away and said, "Would you *stop* saying that. Not an angel."
"What?"
"I. Am not an angel. Used to be an angel. Not anymore. Because of the whole…" he pointed at the ground and then made a downward corkscrew. "You know?"
"Oh?" It took the angel another few brow-knitted moments before he got it. "Oh," he said then, sitting back, regarding Crowley with wide eyes, then narrow ones. "Oh, so you're…"
"Yeah." There it was. No more falling. Give us your worst.
The angel's expressive face was suddenly unreadable, his posture straighter, and whatever it was that came next, Crowley wasn't interested in being here for it. He started to get up, but as this was his very first attempt at standing upright, he wobbled like a foal and crashed back to his already rubbed-raw knees.
"Fuck," he shouted, half in pain, half in frustration, half in despair, and yes that was three halves, but math hadn't exactly been finalized yet and Crowley was feeling a lot of things. "Fuck," he shouted again, this time loud enough to hurt his throat, burning through the knot that had returned. He pounded the rock with his fist, until his knuckles bled, and his eyes felt like they were bleeding too, only what dropped to the rock wasn't red. "Fuck," he whispered, lowering his forehead to the rock, holding on to it for dear life as some absolute *bullshit* that would later be called sobbing had its way with his stupid body.
"Oh," the angel said gently. "Oh no, that doesn't seem good. Oh dear. Hush now. Here we go." The angel took him firmly by the shoulders and lifted him until he sat back on his heels, then took Crowley's bloody hands in his own and something soft and warm rippled through them. When Crowley pulled them back, the scrapes were healed. Then one more pass of the angel's hands and the red was gone too.
The angel stood and pulled Crowley to his feet as well, steadying him with a firm grip on his shoulders until Crowley was able to stand on his own. "This bit's a little tricky at first, isn't it. Oh dear, your poor, whatever those are called."
"Knees," Crowley said, still feeling a little dazed. "I think they're called knees." Why his creator chose to wire that bit of knowledge into him and not, you know, what the fuck he was supposed to do now, he didn't know.
"Yes, that sounds right." The angel waved a hand and the blood, the scrapes, even the pain was gone. Before Crowley could say something or do something, the angel laid a hand on his arm and said ever so gently, "Are you okay?"
"Yup, fine, great. Fixed it right up. Good job. I should," he jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
"No, I mean. After the whole," the angel pointed at the ground and imitated Crowley's earlier gesture. "After everything that happened. I know," he bit his lip. "I know they say you all got what you deserved but no one said what that was. We're not really supposed to talk about you at all. I just, after everything that happened, I worried. So… are you? Okay?"
"Am I? Okay? Am *I* okay? Am I *okay*?"
"Y-yes?" the angel said timidly, taking a step back.
"AM I OKAY?" Crowley roared. He stalked up to the angel until they were nose to nose, viciously poked his chest and through gritted teeth, hissed, "Am I *fucking* okay, is what you're asking?"
"Well that's not precisely how I would—"
"*Fuck* you," Crowley spat out, then before he could do something he would regret, he turned on his heel and hurled himself to the ground, wrenching himself through sheer force of will into his serpent form just before hitting the rock.
As he slithered quickly into the underbrush, he left the angel's plaintive protestation of "Wait" and "I'm sorry" and "At least tell me your name, I'm Aziraphale. I'll be at the gate if you ever want to talk," behind him.
But Crowley didn't want to talk. He didn't, at that point, even know how to forgive. He just wanted to get as far away from the angel as possible. After a few minutes of slithering, he came upon that clearing. In that clearing was a lovely, tempting apple tree with plump, juicy fruit heavy on the branches.
In the distance, he heard the humans' laughter and bitterness consumed him. Fuck God. Fuck God's rules. Fuck the angel for following God's rules. Fuck the angel for not falling too. Crowley looked up at the tree and wondered what, exactly, God might do to the angel if the angel failed in his mission.
Not that Crowley cared. Not that Crowley imagined what it might be like if the angel were to fall and join him and make eternity a bit less boring. Still, he thought, if he fucked up one of God's precious plans, that'd be nice, wouldn't it? Look good on the paperwork too.
The human laughter sounded again and he slithered in its direction. Seducing the angel, tempting him with carnal pleasures would probably look good on the paperwork as well. But even as he thought it, he discarded the idea. What happened wasn't something he wanted to be tortured with by his comrades. No. The memory was Crowley's, and if anyone was going to torture him with it, it would be *him*. No one else. This was his angel, and he wasn't willing to share.