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Crowley didn’t say anything anymore.
Not really, not like he had before. They were never alone together now, though sometimes Gabriel would look up from his chores, and Crowley would be there, hovering just past the doorway.
Gabriel ached for him, and missed him so desperately. But it wasn’t safe. Gabriel wasn’t safe–in general or for Crowley.
It was a mistake they only needed to make once to learn the lesson.
Gabriel could still feel it when he looked at the demon. Could feel Crowley under him, feel the way his body yielded under punishing hands. Could still see the confusion, and the fear, and the dark, finger-shaped bruises that lingered after–
Distance wouldn’t keep them safe–Gabriel knew better–but at least when danger came, it would come with a moment’s warning. It was better than none at all.
He wondered sometimes if it would be better if he didn’t know what was happening. The clawing guilt would still be there, the helplessness would still be there, but at least he would not have to bear witness to it, to this thing that was just another in a long, horrible line of things he had no control over.
It wouldn’t be better, not really–he knew that, and he was a coward for even thinking it.
The thing was, it didn’t happen often. Not compared to the myriad of other options Aziraphale had at his disposal to make their existence an endless living nightmare. It didn’t need to–after the first time, the threat was always there in the background as a possibility .
Gabriel would be in his tiny room, or kneeling at Aziraphale’s feet in the study, or hanging from the punishment bar in the playroom, and he’d feel Aziraphale’s hand run through his hair and hear the chilling words–
“Let’s go see Crowley, shall we?”
And Gabriel would try to nod or shake his head or do something, anything at all, but nothing would happen, as if the signals from his brain to his body didn’t make it through, like they hadn’t been sent at all.
And then his body did move, but it wasn’t Gabriel doing it. He could still feel it all, still see and hear and sense it all as his body moved as if of its own volition, as it stood and stretched. He could feel his hands on himself, smoothing down the front of his clothes, neatly possessive. This is mine, the gesture said.
This is mine, it said as those same hands pushed and pulled at a trembling Crowley who couldn’t do more than let it happen for fear of making it worse. As if there could be anything worse than this. As if there was an end to this nightmare, a place where a new one could start afresh.
No, please. His own hands forcing his demon down, his own bruising grip on places he’d only ever touched before with love .
Please.
Gabriel didn’t know if Aziraphale could hear him like this, when he was a prisoner in his own head. He suspected not, suspected he’d be forced to silence here, too, otherwise.
And then it would be over, as quickly as it began, and they would be left to face the devastation Aziraphale left for them.
Gabriel had reached out to Crowley, the first time, but had shrunk back at the demon’s violent flinch away.
“It’s all right,” Crowley had said. “It’s all right. ‘S probably as much as I deserve.”
It wasn’t. It wasn’t. No one deserved that, no one deserved any of this.
But how to convince Crowley of that when the opposite was a lesson so brutally driven home, again and again and again? When there was already so little Gabriel could do or say to negate it?
It would just keep happening, until Aziraphale grew bored or found some other new torment to amuse himself and to crush what was left of the two of them.
And Crowley didn’t say anything anymore.