I was ENTIRELY too nice in that last ficlet, and we cannot have that. Since that phrase is going to be stuck in my brain for a while, enjoy "they aren't talking" take two.
This time with more pain <3 You're very welcome.
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They aren't talking.
Crowley is exhausted, Aziraphale is spiteful, and so, as they inevitably begin to orbit around one another once more, it is in a cutting silence. It hurts somewhere deep in their chests, a hollow with empty claws reaching out and being denied what it wants, what it needs.
I miss you, is written in the air between them, always a few steps apart, always far enough away to make it look deliberate, to make a point. Dark glasses cover Crowley's eyes, his face a chiselled mask of petrified longing, and the purple irises that Aziraphale returns with are enough to deter Crowley from meeting his gaze.
Blue, they were blue. He remembers. a storm-grey, summer-sky-bright, sparkling and familiar and alive鈥攄immed to a bleached-out violet, a hyacinth blossom on the verge of rotting.
Come back, he breathes, listening to the melodic cadence of his voice as it drifts through the bookstore, finally at home. They do not talk to each other, but they talk to everyone else; not that they had another choice with yet another apocalypse about to end them all.
Crowley's fingers twitch, his body constantly leaning and stumbling when it finds not the subconsciously expected shoulder but emptiness, and he catches Aziraphale lifting his hands in his periphery, almost reaching out to steady him.
Almost.
Angels descend, demons ascend, and it is chaos. It is plans going wrong and the sky turning red, it is running and thinking and praying. Even right in the middle of Armageddon number two, they still do not talk, distracted and frenzied now, less intentional, more habitual.
Then the world tilts, blinding white ripping through his body like it's nothing, meeting a black hole where his grace had been and setting fire to his heart.
The why, who, how, where鈥攏one of it matters, not to him, not to Aziraphale, who screams his name. His knees meet the ground with a dull crack, and Crowley blinks through the lightning bolts in his vision to see scared blue eyes, wide open and heavy with tears. Relief washes over him, his thoughts narrowing to he's back, he's mine again, he's back.
"Crowley," soft, terrified, desperate, and the most beautiful sound he has ever heard.
They aren't talking.
A strangled sob escapes his aching chest, darkness swallowing him whole to soothe the pain eating away at him. He will wake later, he hopes, if just to hear Aziraphale say his name again. To hear it gentle and amused, to hear it pressed against his skin, his lips, to hear it over and over and over for all the times they did not, could not.
CROWLEY AND AZIRAPHALE TEXTING...
On Satan and God's grapevines? What is going on?
PART 1
I can make more of these, if anyone wants them (I'm gonna make more even if nobody wants more, these were too much fun, and I need to upload them for a fic, so. They might change if I tweak the narrative)
This is a hype/continuation of my Good (Extended) Omens series on AO3, which meshes with their 6000 years of history. Read HERE.
I guess part of the reason why 'they aren't talking' is hitting is because up until now there's been the possibility that the ineffable divorce isn't actually as big of a break-up as it seemed. Like, they've had fights and long periods of not speaking in the past, and everything seemed to be going so well for them until literally the last fifteen minutes of the season. Surely there was a chance they'd make up and it wouldn't be the biggest deal, right? They've done it before, many times.
But no, they aren't talking to the extent that Armageddon is at risk of going badly wrong. It seems implied that despite the fate of the world being on the line, they're still struggling to reconcile their differences. We weren't overreacting when the ineffable divorce devastated us. This break up is real bad.