{david tennant character oneshots}

Crowley ~ The Pain of Falling

💖🖤💕🥀🎶😉🤕 🖋

It was an unseasonably warm night, a light and warm night breeze brushing over your skin like a fond kiss or Crowley's wings brushing up on your skin, as they were doing now. His wing was wrapped around you as you sat on a hilltop with your backs leaning on his Bentley because you had woken up screaming, dreaming of being trapped, once again, inside Aziraphale's bookshop as it burned around you, the angel himself discorporated. 

Below you was the glittering expanse of a small village at the base of the hill; above you were the stars, winking at you from the blue-black sky. It was nearly morning and they would soon be gone, but it was nice to look up at the stars.

"I helped create them, you know," Crowley said out of nowhere, voice oddly soft and quiet. You looked at him, blinking your confusion. "The stars. When I was an angel."

Your eyes widened as you looked between Crowley and the stars. "You created them?"

"Helped to," he corrected, his faint blush still visible in the dark, largely because you'd gotten so good at seeing his blushes over the years. 

"You helped create the stars as an angel," you said.

"Yes."

"What was it like?" Well, if Crowley had been planning on distracting you from the memory of flames or the smell of candle wax and scorched books and wood, he'd certainly succeeded. 

"It was...monumental," he said, choosing the word carefully. "Fun, but difficult. It wasn't easy. I had to make stars from galactic matter, had to give them a heart and a life and the means to keep burning when I wasn't nurturing them. It was...it was a bit like being a mother to some very demanding children."

You giggled. "Is that why you were Warlock's nanny instead of the gardner?"

He nodded. "But if Aziraphale had been any good with children, I would have gladly been the gardener." He wrinkled his nose. "I rather think I should have been anyway. Aziraphale wreaked utter havoc on that poor garden. For years."

You leaned on Crowley, debating in the following silence whether you were going to actually ask this question. You'd wanted to know since he'd first revealed his eyes to you nearly a century ago, when you'd revealed you were an Irish fairy—a Sidhe—one of the Tuatha de Danann. Your hair was nearly the same deep red shade as Crowley's and you were nearly as tall and your own eyes—though yours were the soft purple shade that matched a wisteria plant with a silver pupil rather than yellow and serpentine as his were—revealed your fairy blood. 

You'd been cast away from your people for consorting with humans and angels. And you really wanted to know how Crowley had ended up a demon, but you hadn't yet found the courage to ask him how he'd Fallen. Or why. You knew it was sensitive—you'd run into enough demons to know they didn't like to talk about their Fall.

"Crowley, love?"

"Yes, macushla?" Crowley asked, the Irish word sliding easily from his mouth. He'd called you 'acushla' or 'macushla' for nearly seven hundred years, the term meaning 'vein' or 'pulse' and relating to the English 'my darling'.

"What...what was it like?"

"As an angel?"

You put your hand in his. Your seemed very small now. "Falling."

He stiffened. "Why...why do you wanna know that?"

"It hurts you. I can see that it does and I want to be able to help you deal with it." You bump your shoulder into his, gently squeezing his hand. "Love, I've seen plenty of demons suffer from PTSD from Falling. They don't have someone to help them. Let me help you."

"It..." Crowley swallowed hard. "It hurt." He licked his lips nervously. "It burned. My entire existence was altered, my soul burned away until it...until it was something dark and twisted and black. I lost all my feathers, slowly and agonizing, one by one until there was nothing left and I had to wait until the new ones grew in, and it hurt even more when they did. My eyes changed. They... It became hard to see. My tears were blood for nearly three centuries after my Fall, and the pain still comes and goes, reminders of...of what I lost." He wiped his eyes with his free hand. "I bit through my lips a few times, not used to longer, pointed teeth. And this here"—he raised his hand to the snake branded beneath his short sideburn—"this burned."

You raised your fingers to it, gently tracing it. "You didn't have it tattooed?"

He shook his head. "That's what Aziraphale thinks, too. But it was branded on when I became a demon, the first time I went to...to down there." He leaned on your shoulder, his voice a whisper. "Dagon did it."

"Love, I'm so sorry," you whispered, stroking his short hair. "I'm so sorry." You kissed him gently. "If you don't want to talk about it—"

"No," he said quickly. "No, it...it's fine. I just...I need time."

"Take all the time you need," you whispered. "I'm here forever."

He looked up at you, yellow eyes big and watery with tears. "Forever? You'll stay forever?"

"Until the day my soul disintegrates," you promised. "Maybe my soul will become a plant and you can keep me."

Crowley frowned. "I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"I yell at my plants. I don't think I could yell at you."

You kissed him again. "You yell at your plants when they misbehave. I promise I won't misbehave." You brushed a few stray strands of hair out of his eyes, smiling fondly at him. "Let's go home, love. I'm ready now. Are you?"

He nodded. "Home it is," he said, standing and stretching his wings. They disappeared as he helped you up. You pouted when they were gone and he rolled his eyes, knowing you didn't like it when he hid them. "I'll let you sleep on them when we get home."

Brightening immediately, you hopped into the Bentley. "Alright, then."

The pair of you held hands as Crowley drove home, and Crowley's wings did come back as the pair of you slipped into bed. He held you tight, skin to skin, and kissed you until you drifted off, dreaming mercifully of him rather than all-consuming flames.

You slept without blankets or clothes, kept comfortable by Crowley's warmth beside you and the soft feathers of his wings, for there was no need for them. It was, after all, an unseasonably warm night with a light and warm breeze.