Eternal

Disclaimer: Good Omens, along with its characters, locations, etc. are the property of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. If I owned the rights to it, I wouldn't still be desperate to meet the man that I absolutely ADORE: David Tennant.

Summary: Aziraphale finds out that Crowley is always, constantly in pain and has been ever since his Fall. He soothes the pain and holds Crowley while he talks about Falling. Extremely tender. Hurt/comfort, angst, fluff. One-Shot.

A/N: I just finished writing a very tedious eleven-page paper for one of my classes (in one sitting, took me 3.5 hours), so I feel like my brain is melting. However, I don't want to go to sleep yet, and I have nothing better to do, so I'm going to get this idea out into the world. I thought of this because I have been having issues for the past few days with my bad knee (blew it out three times in high school) and I'm usually in pain. I figured maybe Crowley was as well. But I digress. Please consider leaving a review if you like this, those always fuel my fire!

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Eternal

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Crowley had exactly two secrets that he never planned to divulge to Aziraphale: he was in love with the silly angel, and he was constantly in pain because of his Fall. He was usually an open book with Aziraphale, never trying to hide what he is thinking or feeling about a particular topic of conversation. But he did not want Aziraphale to know those two things. He didn't want Aziraphale to know that he was in love with him, because he was convinced that the angel did not reciprocate. He didn't want to tell Aziraphale that he loved him only to be rejected. And he did not want Aziraphale to know about his constant pain because he dreaded the thought of the pitying looks that he would receive.

He had learned the hard way that there was really no way to ease the pain that he felt because of his Fall. He felt as if there was Hellfire burning through his bones, tearing through his veins and blood vessels and leaving ash behind. His joints ached, like they were being squeezed by an invisible hand. He had tried everything available to him in order to alleviate the pain: magic, herbs, medicine. It didn't work. He wondered if he felt this pain simply because he was one of the Fallen (which would mean that all of the other demons felt it too) or if it was because he was never a proper demon, aligning more in the middle than on the evil side of the spectrum. He tried not to think about it too much.

Today was a particularly bad day. It had been raining for days, making his joints ache even more than usual, and the fire seemed to be burning a bit brighter (possibly because he had been having a hard time sleeping, which usually helped control the pain to some extent). He generally tired to avoid Aziraphale when the pain was bad, lest he clue the angel into his predicament, so he had been holing up in his flat since it started raining, curled up in a ball on his sofa and hoping that the pain would ease up. Since it hadn't, he had decided, against his better judgement, to go and visit Aziraphale, who could usually ease his emotional pain, if not his physical pain.

Crowley sat up from his sofa, snapping his fingers to change clothes and magically clean his hair. He grabbed his sunglasses, wallet, and keys off the coffee table and hobbled out of his flat, taking the elevator down to the ground floor and heaving himself into the Bentley. He drove fairly close to the speed limit, afraid that his stiff, painful joints would inhibit his usual reflexes and cause him to actually hit someone, especially because he had limited visibility in the downpour.

He pulled up in front of the shop after a few short minutes, parking and slowly clamoring out of his car. He walked slowly to the door, giving himself a moment to put on a mask to hide the amount of pain he was in before walking inside. He could tell that the shop was closed and locked for the night, but he also knew that Aziraphale ad a spell on the door that would let him in regardless of where the angel was or what he was doing.