Nostalgic

N0st4lg4

A/N: I feel this song is the mood of the chapter, can't help think the Ritz is a trippy mess.

The waiter approached their table for the seventh time that night, carrying with him the seventh and eighth bottles of wine Crowley and Aziraphale graciously accepted. It was the day after the Armageddon that had not to be and they'd be damned if they weren't going to celebrate their newly found freedom anywhere but the Ritz. Crowley had been begging to go lose a few brain cells after the world collectively lost its marbles and surprisingly resurrected itself. While Aziraphale, on the other hand, was just happy to get to have a nice evening with the man that made the world worth fighting for; getting stone cold drunk to him was a side effect of the demon's presence. Nothing had particularly led them through the eight bottles of expensive wine, but the more they drank the more the hellscape from the previous evening seemed to fade from memory and that lifted the dead weight sitting on both the Demon's and the Angel's shoulders.

"Angel, getting absolutely smashed with you is fun in all," Crowley uddered in between sips of bottle number seven, "but I can't help - I can't help wondering when we started doing this thing in the first place?" He placed the bottle down gesturing to the lovely white table set between them.

Aziraphale was caught off the guard by the question. He was sure he heard that before. He had been stumbling his way through his interpretation of an encounter with a special angry goose from a couple of months ago ,"I don't think I have a clue either." Aziraphale picked up bottle number eight and started to pour himself a glass, trying to look a tad bit more classy than Crowley who had given up his crystal for just straight drinking from number seven. "Yeah, it's been a long time since I took you for our first dinner." Though it was Crowley's job to do the tempting, Aziraphale had been quite good at getting Crowley to follow him to all matter of places: the park, the bookshop, and many different pubs and bars throughout the centuries. Sometimes, Aziraphale would even be alone at a movie or a show, watching Pyramus and Thebes or Cars 2, and would mysteriously find the Crowley had been there too. 

The lights in the restaurant flicked, and Aziraphale was zipped out of his thoughts. Then with more emphasis, the chandeliers over there heads shook violently and all noise that possibly filled the Ritz, silenced, like god unplugged the sound from the scene. Cowley said something inaudible, smiled at him and hid his face behind the emerald of number seven as if he was embarrassed by something said. Aziraphale was confused as all get out. For a second he thought after six thousand years he finally went deaf with age.

"Crowley?" Aziraphale heard himself state plainly, but Crowley continued to sip his wine as if the Angel was the wind. "CROWLeY?" He said again and Crowley silently, convulsing, fell onto the table. "OH GOD." Aziraphale shot out of his velvet chair and tried to shake the Demon as if securing him would return there night out back to normal. However, his hand slipped through Crowley's form and hit the expensive table underneath. Aziraphale was terrified. "Oh GOD CROWLEY?" he shrieked clutching his hand to his heart. Taking a few steps back, he expected to feel the weight of another table to his back but got nothing and fell backwards, hitting the floor hard. This couldn't be happening. He was just eating a lovely meal with the great man in his world while the world went to hell. 

'Hell' Aziraphale thought. He must be in Hell, though the last time he went as Crowley it was dark, cramped, and industrial. No, this couldn't be Hell. This was worse. The Demon continued to seize on the table and the Ritz began to shake again.

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Crowley was ardent. He felt dangerous and he wanted to kill everything in Britain. He was terrified of his rage. Aziraphale was gone and nothing. He remembered the time before the apocalypse when the Angel disincorporated and it felt a hell of a lot like that. Crowley couldn't find a speck of rubble that even suggested that anyone had been there, none less his pastel friend. "NO, GO- SATAN YOU CAN'T HAVE MY BOYFRIEND!" People began to crowd around the sandwich shop and Crowley continued to shift between ceiling tiles and bricks to prove his hunch wrong. Beezelbub couldn't kill an Angel, could she? Aziraphale couldn't be dead. He couldn't go to heaven. They were both traitors. However, Crowley didn't want to think Aziraphale was in Hell. He didn't want to think about him getting ripped apart in a Magma chamber or stuck in the dark, but he wasn't sure if that was entirely where Aziraphale went.

He couldn't think of anything that would send Aziraphale to Hell. 'Maybe', he thought, 'Maybe for betraying his divine duty. Maybe for killing kids on multiple occasions. Maybe for loving another man', Crowley let the thoughts swim around his head while he sat in the corner and began tearing up.  He had to speak to a higher authority if he was to get his Angel back. Crowley wondered if he needed to contact God herself to figure out this mess the Demon Lord caused. 

However, Crowley didn't want to do anything. It was an awful, selfish part in him that wanted to do nothing and roll with this new reality. The worse thing had happened again and he was done putting up with it. He also wondered if he was uninheritly planning to leave Aziraphale. Smoking. Feverish paranoia and forseen thoughts that one of them was going to abandon the other. Maybe that was just his issue, Crowley considered, but he reasoned with himself, got off the floor, and head to his Bentley. 

He wouldn't let his demonic brain stop him from getting back the only person in the world that would put up with him. The only person that went out for lunch with him, and picnics, and Lido. Crowley got in his car, inched up to the steering wheel, and launched his car to the only place in the world he could think would have answers: Aziraphale's bookshop.