Title: like taking the same picture over and over
Fandom: Good Omens
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~1500
Written For: Challenge 270: Shower.
Content notes: Pining Crowley, angst.
Author notes: It's a translation of a fic of mine (originally in Spanish), and the theme fitted, so...
Summary: Six thousand years to be in love with someone are way too many years.



I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything,
without having to say that I ran out into the street to prove something,
that he didn't love me,
that I wanted to be thrown over, possessed.
I want to tell you this story without having to be in it
—The Torn-Up Road, Richard Siken

The issue, the main issue in this life he calls his, is that one cannot safeguard something for six thousand years and expect it not to try and fly away, like filling on cushions that have been patched up over and over again. Six thousand years to be in love with someone are too many years; is what he wants to tell him, sometimes, when they toast, or when they are so drunk they can hardly say his name or each other’s.

Not that Crowley is used to say Aziraphale’s name; he’d rather call him any other name because the original always leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

He wants to grab him by the collar and scream about it in Rome, in New York, in Lisboa. Aziraphale touches him, Crowley soaks himself in the touch like paper consuming with fire; he wants to tell him to leave the hand there, to make him feel something, just to give him something to work with, because no one can survive for centuries feeding only on crumbs.

And yet here he is, exactly the same he were on fifth century and will be on the 25th if this terrible world God created manages to not self destruct itself.

*

Another war ends and Crowley comes back to London exhausted, hurt all over, he wants to sleep another whole century.

Aziraphale places his hand on his lower back and Crowley lets himself be carried away by the unrelenting touch. They drink again until they are fed up of wine and whisky and more wine. Aziraphale doesn’t ask anything, but he knows. And if he doesn’t, he is able to imagine enough of it.

Sometimes the Arrangement is not knowing too much of the other’s job.

Usually Crowley is a demon of more terrenal temptations. Most of history’s horrors’ origin is the human nature and doesn’t require much demonic or angelic intervention; but sometimes… Sometimes duty (or Hastur) calls and Crowley has to obey.

Sixth, seventh hour drinking non-stop and Crowley is staring at Aziraphale. He is so, so tired that is hard to conceal it and licks his lips watching how he tries to open a new bottle and looks for his glass when he finally does it. It’s too far, so he shrugs and just takes a swig from the bottle, a signal that he is starting to be really drunk.

He could warn him before he makes a mess of himself but doing favors to Aziraphale is like a drug that someone created just for Crowley. He watches a pearl of wine leave his lips, it stops for a second on the edge of his jaw and then goes down, fast, just as Crowley would want to go.

“Aziraphale.”

“Yes, dear?”

Six thousand years of this, angel, there are less hurting tortures in hell.

—You’ve…

He points at the dirty shirt and waits greedily for the familiar dance: the disappointed face he makes when he sees the stain, the dramatic pouting of not wanting to clear it by himself, the dropping of his eyelids, the favor he doesn’t need to ask for.

—Really, angel.

Crowley plays hard to get but drops himself closer to Aziraphale and touches with his index the dirty collar, makes it disappear and seizes the moment to caress the skin. He doesn’t need to, of course, but that’s something he is taking home, along with the drunk smile and the hand that, after, rests on his shoulder.

It’s too much for just a day.

“Gimme that, come on.”

Takes the bottle and in the way back puts some space in between them, and drinks half of it on a swig.

*
Do something or I’ll never talk to you again, he said, and Crowley, after the panic and almost ending the world thinks that he must know. Angels are supposed to feel goddamned love, aren’t they? It’s impossible to think that he can’t feel this that sometimes Crowley swears it consumes him, drains him, leaves his soul shattered in a thousand pieces.

He must know.

Sometimes he likes to mortify himself thinking that Aziraphale has known it from the beginning, that he just doesn’t care enough to save him from suffering. Maybe he deserves it. He wants to tell him that he has to do something, anything with him, something besides leaving him on hold for all eternity. Something besides this: the glasses full of champagne, the Ritz almost empty, the miracles to still be served despite of the late hours, the knees knocking under the table. Crowley burns, he’s been burning since he Fell and sometimes is like he never stopped.

*

A long time ago Aziraphale was very close to asking him about It. To Fall is one of the few things that scare angels, in the end, and even if Aziraphale was sure about his position, no one of his kind is fully spared from it. They had work to do but Aziraphale suggested they saw the Perseids, and Crowley, as always, accepted.

“You have actually seen that it’s clouded, haven’t you?”

“Something tells me that it will be clear by the night.”

“You’d need a fucking miracle for that”, Crowley answered, looking at it. He still wasn’t used to that dynamic of Aziraphale, always asking without saying out loud.

Aziraphale smiled, and Crowley found out in that moment that he was, and always will be, looking at something that would never be his.

“Maybe.”

The Perseids or, better said, the inspiration to check for them, notice the repetition and writing the appearances down, had been Aziraphale’s, so he was weirdly proud of them. Crowley, of course, made the sky clear and followed Aziraphale to the place he wanted to see them. To this day, he still doesn’t know why he started talking about the Creation of the stars but he did it and, after a while, he opened his eyes to a million white, blinking lights in the sky. Aziraphale was watching him like it had never seen him.

“Sometimes I forget”.

Crowley knew already what he was talking about. He, too, forgets that on another life he was like Aziraphale but, to be honest, mostly he doesn't want to remember.

He swallowed and looked for something, anything, to say.

“What are you saying, angel?”

“Sometimes…”

But he never carried on with what he was going to say. They looked at each other for a long, long time, the world around them in a eerie silence, like time had stopped. Aziraphale wanted to ask, and Crowley doesn’t really know if he would have been able to tell him or not. To be able to explain something like that: to be something and then being something wholly different, the eternal pain that lasted for a second, everything burning, bimpossible to grasp, to put into words. To lose your name, your identity, anything that made you you.

“Azirafel.”

“What?”

Falling was terrible, but this may be even worse.

“It begins.”

Aziraphale teared his gaze from his eyes to look to the sky, marveled about the shower of stars that rode across it.

Crowley let out air that he was holding as if he needed it.

*

Always about to something, about to burn, about to speak, about to fall. He wants to do things that he doesn’t even want to name, feel Aziraphale’s weight on top of him, he wants to be on his knees and rub the face against his thigh, there in the restaurant; he wants to do something, anything for this need that consumes him to be alleviated. Aziraphale takes a prawn delicately and drowns it in the sauce, licks his thumb after making almost obscene noises and Crowley wants to do that, too, wants to have those fingers within reach even if it was only that. Sit beside him and let Aziraphale put his hand in the nape of his neck, let him put him down, lick him anything that he would let him.

“Aziraphale.”

“Crowley.”

If I could tear away how I feel about you I could sell it like a new circle of hell.

“Crowley? Are you alright?”

Crowley smiles, not entirely sure about how the grin is coming out, taking into account how Aziraphale is looking at him, something between worried and confused. He wish he was braver. He wish he was able to do a goddamned thing. He chickens out.

“What would you say to dessert?”

And, again: the familiar dance, the smile, the glint in his eyes. Crowley is left with that and he saves it, treasures it. Anyway, what’s another day in six thousand years?