Like, listen:

a. THE WAY HE LOOKS AT HIM even when playing “enemies”

b. His smile when Crowley appears to save him in France? SOFT

c. WHEN HE FALLS IN LOVE

d. That cutesy smile and blush????

e. The way his gaze lingers after the sexually charged moment AND HE’S LOOKING AT THIS LIPS BEFORE HIS GAZE GOES UP??

f. “to the world” but say it like it means “i love you”

One of my favorite bits about Crowley’s characterization is that he questions not just for the sake of questioning, not just for the sake of rebelling, but because he truly doesn’t understand how God can structure the world in such cruel and unjust ways and then expect everyone to fare the same (and then punishes them in turn). Crowley’s moral compass has perhaps never lined up with Heaven’s but it’s always been there and has always been steady and always finely-tuned.

Rated T. Warning for graphic injury.

*

“Shit, shit, shit,” Crowley chanted under his breath, a litany of background noise he barely paid attention to. He ripped his sunglasses off and tossed them away, hands hovering shakily over Aziraphale’s body. He hadn’t the faintest idea how to fix this. 

“It’s all right, dear.” The words would have been gentle and reassuring if it weren’t for the raspy, weak way Aziraphale spoke. He coughed, and the way his chest moved was wrong. “The child?”

Crowley whined in the back of his throat, but spared a glance for the young teenager sitting dazed on the side of the road. “Fine. The kid’s fine, I swear. Angel, tell me what to do.” His hands finally came down to cup Aziraphale’s jaw, clumsily wiping the bloody spittle from the corner of his mouth. Miracles he could do, but healing wasn’t in any demon’s wheelhouse. He was the only demon he knew who could heal at all, and this was… this was beyond him.

Distantly, Crowley was aware of the driver panicking, their shattered car embedded in a pole nearby; the gathered humans were making a lot of distracting noise, and someone had called for emergency services.

None of it mattered, only the idiotic angel in front of him who had used his fragile human body instead of a miracle to shove a child out of harm’s way. “How could you be so stupid?” Crowley muttered, trying to feel out the damage. Lungs, yes, that’s what the blood meant. And bones, at least a few broken…

“Hush. No big loss.” Aziraphale smiled, reaching towards Crowley with one arm. The other lay crooked, unnaturally still at his side. Crowley grabbed the offered hand immediately, clutching it to his chest, eyes wide and fully yellow. “Glad she’s all right. I’ll be - ngh - back in a jiffy.”

“You don’t know that!” Crowley cried, curling forward. The angel grunted sharply at the motion, and Crowley cursed in frustration, dropping Aziraphale’s hand like it burned. “We haven’t heard from Head Office in months! Angel, please. Aziraphale. You can’t discorporate. They might not let you go this time! They’ll have you just where they want you! Why, why, you stupid, beautiful, noble - ”

He cut himself off abruptly, trying to pull himself together. Focus. Lungs. Lungs must be the most immediate problem. He could fix that. Couldn’t he?

Crowley closed his eyes, pressing his hands to Aziraphale’s chest, muttering an apology when that drew a pained gasp. A miracle from below - he’d done millions of them, he’d healed his own corporeal form of nicks and scratches, he’d brought a dove back to life, for Satan’s sake, this couldn’t be that hard -

There, the cracked sternum, the fractured ribs, the torn lungs. He could sense it like he was there, existing amongst the capillaries and the flesh that made up Aziraphale’s earthly body, more intimate than they’d ever been. Somewhere outside of himself, Crowley laughed hysterically. He was finally inside Aziraphale. It was definitely not what he had imagined.

Focus.

Demonic miracles were not meant to do this, but Crowley wasn’t just any demon. Crowley never did what he was supposed to; he bent the rules, he found loopholes, he took credit and passed blame and he knew how to twist the universe to his will, and the universe was not going to take Aziraphale from him, not after all they had been through, not to some stupid human vehicle hammered together from the bones of the earth. If anything took Aziraphale from him, it would have to be God Herself and nothing less.

The puzzle pieces fit together. The universe bent.

A sudden rush of energy nearly froze Crowley’s fingertips with the shock of holiness that edged it.

And Aziraphale sucked in a sharp breath, clear and healthy.

Crowley would never admit to crying; it was sweat that dripped off the tip of his nose and landed on Aziraphale’s ruined waistcoat. He crumpled forward, suddenly exhausted, and laughed dazedly, staring at Aziraphale’s shocked face.

“My dear, that was - ” Aziraphale lifted his arm again, and blinked. Lifted both arms and marveled. “That was wonderful. How ever did you - that was practically Heavenly!” Awe filled the angel’s voice as he moved, discovering nothing broken, nothing damaged. The only lingering sign of how he’d been thrown across the pavement was his ripped clothing.

“Don’t know,” Crowley croaked. He shook his head and scraped his hands through the tears dampening his face, but he couldn’t stop crying and didn’t know why. “I - I fixed you?”

“You did ever so well!” Finally sitting up, Aziraphale assessed their surroundings. The humans were handling themselves, emergency personnel bundling the driver onto a stretcher and others comforting the confused child. Their reflexive ‘don’t look here’ celestial defense had taken care of their privacy quite nicely.

“That shouldn’t have worked. But… but I couldn’t let them have you.” Crowley lifted his chin stubbornly, hands still shaking at his sides, until Aziraphale reached forward to clasp them in his own. Something buckled in Crowley’s expression. “Upstairs wouldn’t send you back, angel.”

I saw this promo? photo of the Sheen man for Prodigal Son 

Snek drinking was inspiration for Crowley’s Snek Mug.

7. “I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory BUT -”

(send me a prompt)

~~~

“Okay, so, I really need someone to listen, and I know you’re willing to, so will you just, like, sit down and listen to me talk about this? Wow, I love you so much.

“Great, so - do you see this whiteboard? Well, of course you see it. It is an object of physical matter and you have functioning eyes. Anyway, so this circle that I’m drawing on this whiteboard? It symbolizes the town, right? And I mean technically the town is not circular, I’m pretty sure it’s closer to a lopsided pentagon thing, but anyway, let’s just pretend this circle is the town, okay? 

“So now let’s talk about space. Here, I’ll write it on the board - SPACE! Space is neat, really. And you can see it in the night sky, as we all know, and also in the dark corners of the room when you have your eyes half closed and you black out for a second, so my theory is basically about space and how the night sky has a different effect on Night Vale than the rest of the world - and I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, BUT -

“Cecil? Are you listening to me? I’m sorry, it’s just for a second, it seemed like you were just looking at me instead of the whiteboard. Is there something on my face? No?

“Okay, so now I’m drawing a line. You see this line, right? It symbolizes the estimated trajectory of the heat death of the universe, and when I say universe, I’m talking about space again. I love science. I’m going to draw a few hearts over here to show that. I love you, too. 

“Sweetie, are you sure I don’t have something on my face? Because you’re just looking at me the whole time with your chin in your hands and this smile on your face. I mean, it’s very cute, like, I couldn’t even calculate how cute it is if I tried to, probably. But this will make more sense if you look at the whiteboard, okay?

“Right, so, heat death. Space. Science. And Night Vale. Now, everything is connected. Maybe you can tell that from these arrows I’ve drawn to connect everything. The scientific method states that we have to start out with a hypothesis, then we have to scream, then we have to test our hypothesis. Now I’ve only just gotten through the screaming stage, but I already have a pretty good idea - 

“Cecil, if you don’t stop looking at me - Cecil, this is very distracting, and your smile is really cute. Okay, stop that. If you don’t stop doing that cute smile I’m gonna have to go over there and kiss it off of you, and that would really disrupt my presentation.” 

I was recently reminded of the (adorable) fact that crows enjoy rolling down snowy hills, and since I like to headcanon that Crowley’s wings are crow wings…

Crow instincts: C’mon! :D  It’ll be fun! :D :D :D

Snake instincts: What the He— What on EARTH are you thinking!?!

In which Nanny Ashtoreth and Cook Fell work at the Dowling household and Crowley and Aziraphale have several years of domestic bliss. Based on “A Bushel and a Peck” by @thehoyden go read it