It's a picture-postcard sunrise as Crowley ghosts back through the streets of L.A., headed towards Raguel's apartment, and it gives his face a little colour. He feels strange - flattened and insubstantial, like nighttime in the desert has eroded something out of him, worn it away with cold and dust, from right around the time when he found that it
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He just stands there, framed by the doorway and - still, so utterly and suddenly still, his hand resting loosely on the doorknob.
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After a moment (long enough), he leans forward and carefully places the mug on the coffee table, brushes some imaginary lint from his trouser leg. And only then does he stand, and take a couple of steps toward the demon. Crowley doesn't look well at all.
"Are you all right?"
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And still, Crowley just stands there - just looking at him, and nothing else, as though he can't quite process the fact that Aziraphael is here. That despite everything, Aziraphael somehow knew where he was, and came to him, and waited for him, and is here.
"Aziraphael," he says, stupidly.
His sunglasses are supposed to be a shield. A multitude of sins, he'd told Raguel. But there's no hiding the cracks running through the demon's expression. Not like that.
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"Will you come and sit?"
There's a thick quilt lying half-folded on the couch. When he was 'decorating' Crowley might have decided that the room needed a little visual warmth, but it's unlikely he'd have chosen quite those colours.
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He'd had a plan. Rehearsed it and everything, endlessly, out in the freezing desert, revised and reworked and rehearsed it again, how he was going to come back and what he was going to say to put things back the way they were. He'd had a plan.
This just wasn't in it.
Aziraphael isn't supposed to be here.
(It doesn't make sense.)
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"Thank you, my dear; I'll deal with it later, I think. Come sit? There are some things I have to - things you should know."
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Impossible.
He folds himself down onto the couch, spare and precise, avoiding the garish quilt without ever (quite) looking at it.
His forehead is furrowed. Wary.
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"Look, you are all right, aren't you?"
...That wasn't it, but he couldn't help it. Crowley still doesn't look well at all.
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His hands twitch on his lap, before he fastens them firmly together.
('Home'.)
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"Oh," he says, a little taken aback. Crowley seems very unguarded, for a demon in sunglasses. Well, for Crowley.
"Er. 'Going to -'?"
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His fingers loosen a little from their sudden, tight cage, and he turns his hands palm-upwards on his knees. A supplication.
"Apologise," he says. "I was going to apologise."
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"I'm not sure that's entirely--" he begins in a wavery voice, and trails off before he can finish.
"I have plenty of apologies to make as well, as it happens," he says instead, a little more strongly. "That's part of why I needed to come. And I wanted to be sure you were all right."
(That's a hint, if Crowley chooses to take it.)
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He's exhausted.
(And Aziraphael is sitting here in front of him, and asking if he's all right.)
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But he can't, yet.
"I'm sorry," he blurts out. "That's the last thing I wanted, after all this."
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He needed somewhere that wouldn't make him sick with memories, everywhere he went.
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